A scintillating road trip movie about much more than sex. Cuaron's shooting style is intimate and immediate; the political commentary is baked in for viewers who know where to look. The performances are raw and vulnerable. A classic of queer cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 12, 2025

Y Tu Mamá También is a bracing depiction of adolescence’s sudden end.

Full Review | Mar 20, 2025

... An embarrassing indulgence for an hour forty-six minutes in sophomoric sexual comments and behavior in a road-trip story lacking imagination.

Full Review | Jun 11, 2024

Its tone is absolutely unique -- by turns obnoxious, erotic, funny, world-weary and sad. Sometimes it manages to be all those things at once.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 9, 2023

What could've been a pretentious cinematic treatise on sex and politics in Mexico is instead an astute and genuine film. Give credit to Cuarón's screenplay, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and especially a trio of excellent lead actors.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 9, 2023

Although the pace is buoyantly charming, Cuarón -- and his screenwriter brother, Carlos Cuarón -- never let the viewer forget that life and death go on outside the car windows.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 9, 2023

[Alfonso Cuarón] has here crafted a wonderfully precise and observant picture that feels as utterly natural and off-handed as a roguish reminiscence between life-long friends.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 9, 2023

Forget Cuarón's transparent attempts to make his movie more meaningful. This is just a down-and-dirty teen fantasy, never shy about its clumsily sexual appeal.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 9, 2023

Directed with pizazz by Cuarón, based on an agreeably unpredictable script he wrote with his brother Carlos, Y tu mamá también is a blast of energetic filmmaking, an exuberant romp that breathes new life into the sex comedy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 9, 2023

[Gael García Bernal] is especially vivid... We suspect that soon he will be offered roles in American films. But this scintillating film makes a compelling argument that there's a paradise waiting for those who keep traveling south.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 9, 2023

It is Cuarón's answer to the surplus of boneheaded American teen-sex capers that at once romanticize and trivialize juvenile sexuality, and he approaches the subject with refreshing candor.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 9, 2023

This is a movie that bristles with spontaneity and brims with subtext.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Sep 9, 2023

Criticizing this movie for having too much sex is to miss the point. People will either accept the scenes or not, but Y tu mamá también suffers from a far worse affliction: There's not a single likeable character in the movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 9, 2023

Cuarón, who employed magic realism to weave a spell in A Little Princess, now uses an almost documentary style to set out a story that is very far from a romantic fairy tale.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 9, 2023

It embraces passion, both physical and emotional, but it has depths that register only when the end credits roll.

Full Review | Sep 9, 2023

What originally appears to be a Mexican version of a raunchy teen sex comedy reveals itself to be not only the best foreign language film released this year, but also the best film, period.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 9, 2023

In any event, it still plays out like a generic male fantasy without sufficient dramatic motivation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 9, 2023

Cuarón is obviously working in well-trod territory, the coming-of-age genre. But everything about the film is so vibrantly conceived that nothing seems familiar.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 9, 2023

Yes, [Y tu mamá también] is as sexually explicit and ferociously frank as you've heard. The film is also a provocative, corrosively funny statement on class distinction in Mexico, however, and a scathingly honest account of adolescent sexual obsession.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 9, 2023

Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón delivers a ribald, fiercely funny and genuinely disturbing coming-of-age tale steeped in sex. It's beautifully acted; what's more, it may be one of the most accurate depictions ever of adolescent boys.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 9, 2023