‘Bob Trevino Likes It’ is a friend request you’ll want to accept

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Like my status if…

Synopsis

Bob Trevino Likes It follows Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira), an emotionally troubled young woman with a rocky relationship with her father, Robert (French Stewart). When Robert decides to cut off all contact with Lily, she tries to find him on Facebook, sending a friend request to a generic, vague profile named Bob Trevino as a last-ditch effort.

It turns out Bob Trevino (John Leguizamo) isn’t Lily’s father but is still somebody who also desires a human connection, as he and his wife Jeanie (Rachel Bay Jones) have grown distant. Lily and Bob eventually meet in person, creating a genuine bond with each other and providing the pieces they’ve both been missing in life.

My thoughts

People often say, “Blood is thicker than water,” or other empty platitudes that state that your family ties reign above all, no matter how much conflict or abuse you might endure. To some folks, just because somebody happens to be your parent or sibling, that allows them to walk all over you, and you just have to take it, all in the name of “family.”

Well, that’s sadly not the case for many people who want nothing to do with their relatives, sometimes for very good reasons. However, that doesn’t mean “family” can’t exist in many forms that have nothing to do with the people sharing the same DNA. It makes sense to form familial bonds with our blood relatives, but as life goes on, we meet various people through different means, which causes these bonds to form. You just have to be looking for it.

Finding your family

Written and directed by Tracie Laymon, Bob Trevino Likes It Written and directed by Tracie Laymon, Bob Trevino Likes It is based on her own personal experience with a man named Bob Trevino, whom she met when trying to reconnect with her father on Facebook. Laymon did take some cinematic liberties when it came to telling her own story, but at the end of the day, the lesson she learned and the lesson the audience learns is all the same: friendship and even family can come from the places you least expect it to.

While watching Laymon’s surrogate character, Lily, attempt to navigate her life when she has nobody around to help her and then grow as a person once she gains a support system, everything we see in Laymon’s writing and direction seems like therapy. This is her feature film debut, and since she’s telling such a personal story about herself, she uses most of her screen time to allow all the emotions to come out. Good or bad, happy or sad, it’s all there.

Ferreira and Leguizamo have fantastic chemistry with each other, instantly hitting it off like they’ve finally found the familial connection they’ve been looking for all this time. They both have things to learn from each other, especially Lily, who gains the physical and emotional tools from Bob’s fatherly love and advice so she can become self-sufficient. It’s one of those authentic relationships where the impact they have on each other is immediate and everlasting.

The two play off each other so well that you wish there were more scenes of them together, because this is where Bob Trevino Likes It is at its strongest. Bob Trevino is the heart of the film and I loved seeing Leguizamo playing such a tender and down-to-earth role. He still has that signature snark, but there’s a sweetness to his performance where the man has clearly suffered a lot of loss, but still tries to be the best person he can to everyone he interacts with. The presence he has in the overall narrative is felt.

Lily of the valley

This is Lily’s story, though, so of course, the primary focus is going to be on her. She’s an incredibly sad character with whom you can really empathize, especially when you find out more information about her. From the beginning scene with her and her father, Robert, discussing his dating life over lunch, you can tell something is off about both of them and their relationship. Lily is an extremely damaged character, and while she may seem like a protagonist who is difficult to root for at first, it’s impossible not to see why she ended up the way she did when the curtain is fully pulled back.

When the film isn’t relying on the chemistry between Ferreira and Leguizamo, Ferreira is still a terrific lead who carries the character of Lily with genuine pathos. She has some truly heartbreaking scenes, such as an intense, confrontational moment between her and her father. Speaking of her father, French Stewart kind of blew me away with his performance, being completely unrecognizable and the antithesis of the goofy characters he’s known for playing. If this is the beginning of the Frenchaissance, then I’m all for it.

Even if it is all quite sad, it’s cathartic watching Lily’s character grow, although it all comes on quickly. The events of the film take place over only a few months, but in real life, Laymon and Trevino corresponded for years. I understand things need to be condensed for narrative purposes, but it felt like their dramatized relationship was developed a little too quickly without the proper time to really let it breathe.

You still feel all the emotions, though, especially during the last 10 minutes where Laymon lays on the sentimentality super thick. She may have been trying hard to pull the audience’s heartstrings, but hey, it worked because it got my tear ducts going. It’s definitely sappy, but the actors are playing their parts so well and this is a true story that’s genuinely from the heart, so I can overlook the somewhat cloying sentimentality at the end.

Final verdict

As someone who met one of his best friends on MySpace (remember that?), I appreciate that Laymon told a story shining a light on how close relationships can be developed with strangers over the internet, especially since she presented it in a realistic way with the Facebook chat aesthetic. The way most movies present tech seems kind of out of touch, but this feels genuine and in this age of social media ruining pretty much everything out there, it’s nice to remember that it can be used for some good.

What takes precedence above all is that we believe the relationship between Lily and Bob, and with Ferreira’s and Leguizamo’s wonderful chemistry, it’s hard not to. Of course, they couldn’t have done it without Laymon’s heartfelt script that shows writing exactly what you know is sometimes the perfect path to telling a great story. Like those lifelong friendships you make through random happenstance, Bob Trevino Likes It is a nice little surprise, and in more ways than one.