johnnyboyz Rolling Family tells the story of a large group of people, more or less members of the same family name, journeying from one side of the nation of Argentina to the other so as to service a long standing and much loved member of their family. It begins and ends with this same elderly woman observing an item, physical in the sense of the opening in the form of some old mementos; but concludes with a pausing and a pondering of something once everything that's happened has happened: new memories have been forged and life goes on. The film has a knowing and sweet eye on life as an item, the bonds that form; the various degrees of love for someone else that unfold; the sacrifices we take on and the hardships we all grind through together. Despite beginning and ending on the same individual, the film is as much about the family within the film as it is her and what she's going through; culminating in an interesting and thoughtful mediation on a number of characters with a number of traits.Pablo Trapero has written and made a piece that will remind you of another Argentinian film, this time from 2001, in La Ciénaga; alá The Swamp. Its sticky, intimate, close-up, cramped feeling is difficult to shake when you watch it; it's heated, not just by way of the weather but also the attitudes certain characters have towards one another at certain times while its wonderfully free flowing feel will guide you effortlessly from one clutch of characters, young or old; male or female, and their problems to another clutch, all the while shifting tones and atmospheres with the minimal of fuss. But Trapero applies certainly the aesthetic of that to a road film arc, taking everything from that enclosed and very rural, very isolated country house and applying it to a film about a large family crammed into a mobile home as they journey from the Buenos Aires outskirts to the town of Misiones.People have compared it to 2006's American film Little Miss Sunshine, but it's a bit better than that; it underplays its material, its more interested in its characters than it is interested in attempting to create some sort of 'cult' item by way of the idea that a broken down, dilapidated yellow VW camper van might act as an iconic image of some kind. It doesn't buckle into providing well known actors playing individuals in the most archetypical of manners; rather, we are provided with rough and ready looking people whom have more of a genuine feel to them as these personal and intimate thoughts and studies are played out. Certain characters here react to different things and each are going through changes in their lives at various points, with a middle aged married couple struggling with one another and their child; adolescents feeling certain feelings for their cousins and gruff looking fathers and husbands raging at both toll booth prices and with members of the constabulary, therefore with the state itself, in what is a varied but focused spread.The film's opening of a large gathering in which a lot of fun is had and many bonds are seemingly enhanced is only the beginning. Elderly woman Emilia (Chironi) announces to everybody at that congregation that she is to travel to the said town of Misiones so as to attend a wedding and contribute heavily to that. The rest of the family take it upon themselves to travel with them in a somewhat rickety mobile home and the adventure is on. Some of the people at the early gathering seem to think they know each other, that they can get along whatever the situation but they learn that it is relatively simplistic to merge with one another at a large and open gathering, when everyone's there to have fun anyway and there's always another space to venture off to with space to manoeuvre. Rolling Family will later consist of enclosed and cramped conditions, in which people are there to journey to a destination with any emphasis on any sort of 'fun'; they are locked in a place in which one may not merely shift to another part of the locale if someone else annoys or frustrates them and they will come to accept a truer form of family bond.Trapero balances the long and wide open Argentinian roads complete with rural nothingness surrounding them really well with the enclosed interior scenes inside the mobile home. Like The Swamp, Trapero is able to get the most out of both the premise of the situation but additionally make the mostly rural locales they find themselves in as sweaty and itchy as the rest of the film. Here's a film, or a pair of films, less interested in quaint cinematography revolving around beautiful foliage part of a forest but the hot and humid border-line jungle that these characters find themselves traipsing through and existing within so as to reach their destination. I can understand a film about a frustrating road trip to a far off locale as individuals with flaws exist within close proximity to one another in a film with a lazy and sticky aura being a tricky sell, but Rolling Family is worth the effort as these characters and each of their predicaments are given due attention.

michaelingp I don't usually do negative comments, but in this case I feel the positive reviews and the IMDb rating are so much higher than the film warrants that you wonder about the impartiality of the writers and voters (a danger when there are so few responses).There are so many good movies of this genre (Little Miss Sunshine and Y tu mamá también come to mind) that you might be interested in this one, based on the reviews. I think you'd be disappointed.1. The camera work in the RV will drive you nuts. Sure, you get the idea that the RV is moving, but you will also get seasick.2. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, the scenery really stinks, and there is too much of it. This is a pretty short movie, and a lot of it is endless shots of the RV going down the road.3. There are too many characters and, as others have mentioned, nothing happens. At one point I was actually looking forward to coming to a toll booth! 4. When something does happen (there is some conflict), the "actors" who work OK when they are just being normal people come up very short, and the scenes just come across as amateurish.If you watch the DVD extra features (I gave them 1 minute), the director says that the film is essentially autobiographical. I think that's the basic problem. People don't watch film to see real life, it's all around them. You can do a great film about real life and you can pace it slowly, but you have to find something profound about the human condition. I didn't see that in this film.

eoscarz I have to admit that I totally disagree with the unfair comments from the previous viewer as I thoroughly enjoyed watching this film. Obviously if you are a fan of fast pace films, such as American blockbusters, then this film will definitely not be your cup of tea. What this film does is to take an ordinary family out of their natural environment and explores their feelings and emotions. There are conflicts throughout and tension among most of their components. It is a journey of discovery. The fact that Grandmother is invited to a family wedding in Misiones (1,200 kilometres from her home in Buenos Aires) is an excuse for the director to deeply explore and investigate how the characters will react and come to terms with their own feelings. The caravan is a very small environment and it is hard for the family to live in such a close boundary. I did not find this film boring in anyway and I will highly recommend to anyone who is interested in human relationships (including mechanics! Haha). The only disappointing thing is that the subtitles does not always give a true representation of the dialogues from the original language and, if you do not speak Spanish, that may be a daring task to follow.

Jeremy Liebster I honestly wanted to like this film. I love Argentina and I like quirky films where not all that much happens. But I am sorry to have to report that this is one of the worst, most excruciatingly dull films I have ever seen. There is absolutely no plot and absolutely no character development. What happens (to use the term loosely) is that a Buenos Aires Grandma decides that her whole family will drive up to Misiones for a wedding and the film shows us what happens on the trip. Which is nothing. Except lots of incidences where the van breaks down which means there are lots of shots of engines and carboretters. We find out very little indeed about any of the family who go on this trip except that one of the men is having an affair with one of the women. Sometimes with road trip films at least you get some lovely shots of the countryside, yet even here the film fails, making the pampas look about as dull as the subject matter.I actually found it remarkable that this film is presumably a work of fiction. The fact that somebody would bother to make up a story where absolutely nothing of interest occurs and where there is no character development or humour is actually remarkable. And the fact that a film company thought that it would be a good idea to buy the story is equally astounding.I occasionally have a problem on my machine with DVDs skipping. And whenever this normally happens I go hopping mad. I have to tell you however that when my copy of La Familia Rodante started jumping I was actually relieved that it meant I would have to endure less of the awful banality that was proceeding in front of me. Honestly, the only people who would like this film are mechanics and even they would get bored after the first breakdown.