If there’s one thing I’ve learned, is that watching too many action movies will make people do crazy things. In the case of Infancia Violenta, a young boy pretends he’s a vigilante with his police father’s gun after watching various action movies so many damn times. In the case of Tambo, he’s able to traveling dimensions or some shit & gain drunken martial arts-like abilities to fight off a bunch of sleazy cult members. Crazy, huh? Cool, huh?
At a gym for ladies, a gorgeous young woman (Socorro Albarran) & her gorgeous friends are kidnapped by a cobra-devil worshipping cult who demand a ransom of $3 million dollars for their safe return. The quirky janitor of the gym “Tambo” (Charly Valentino) becomes the unexpected hero of all this when he gains powers from a book called “Occult Dimensions” which grants him portal dimensional-traveling & strong abilities in the martial-arts. Tambo decides to save the girls with his newly granted powers & a samurai sword. He is now in the same vein as “Cobra” and “Rambo”—his idols.
Tambo is an odd movie and I don’t just say this because it’s a comedy movie, but because this movie feels like you’re really drunk. The movie goes in various directions that either kind of make sense or make no sense at all. You know how when drunk people try to describe you a movie or tv show they can’t seem to recall the title of? That’s what Tambo is basically like. A drunken description of over the top/ridiculous comedic moments & action sequences. As ridiculous as this sounds, Tambo is a rather charming movie. Its aesthetic & peculiar story are all intriguing to see.
Charly Valentino (RIP!) was one of the most popular Mexican comedic actors in the 80’s-90’s and I have never seen him in a serious role and he never had to be serious either because Charly was just a funny guy in general and this movie as ridiculous as it is, Charly made it fun as hell to watch. And not only did Charly make the movie fun with him writing it & starring as the titular character, but everyone else involved in the production clearly just had fun making this. They were not trying to be serious here at all and just wanted to make something completely off the wall & funny.
Tambo is a weird movie and I really like it for that. It is a movie clearly not meant to be taken serious nor something to over-analyze because none of that shit matters here. It’s just a fun & weird movie and nothing more.