Review: ‘¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,’ starring Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Scott Shoemaker and Dana Rodriguez

September 8, 2024

by Carla Hay

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!”

Directed by Arthur Bradford

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in the Colorado municipality of Lakewood and briefly in the Los Angeles area, from 2021 to 2023, the documentary film “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” has a predominantly white group of people (with a few Latin people and African Americans) who are connected in some way to Casa Bonita, a theme park-styled Mexican restaurant in Lakewood.

Culture Clash: “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone buy Casa Bonita out of bankruptcy and encounter many high-priced obstacles in their quest to re-open the restaurant.

Culture Audience: “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Parker and Stone and are interested in watching a documentary about reviving a beloved business.

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” (which means “Pretty House My Love!” in Spanish) is a predictable but enjoyable documentary about the challenges that Trey Parker and Matt Stone had in re-opening the Colorado restaurant Casa Bonita. Parker makes the movie amusing, but aspects of the eatery’s Mexican heritage get sidelined for his antics. It’s also a movie about persistence and the power of childhood nostalgia.

Directed by Arthur Bradford, “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, where it won the Audience Award in the documentary category. “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” (which was filmed from 2021 to 2023) takes place primarily in Lakewood, Colorado, the municipality where Casa Bonita is located and is one of the top tourist attractions in the Denver area. Lakewood is about nine miles southwest of Denver. As of the 2020 U.S. census, Lakewood’s population was reported as 103,355 people, with 66% identifying as white and 23% identifying as Hispanic/Latin of any race. Hispanics/Latin people are the fastest growing ethnic group in Lakewood.

Casa Bonita, which has live entertainment and amusement attractions, has been called “the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants.” The size of the venue (whose exterior is painted in “dusty pink”) is about 52,000 square feet and includes a labyrinth of man-made caves and indoor grottos. Casa Bonita was founded in 1973 by spouses Bill Waugh and Frances Waugh, who then sold the restaurant in 1982 for $32.5 million to a United Kingdom-based company called Wingate, which let Casa Bonita decline into dangerous disrepair because Wingate didn’t want to spend money on the necessary maintenance.

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” has a brief interview with Frances Waugh, who says that she and husband Bill (who died in 2015 at age 79) immediately regretted selling Casa Bonita and thought about buying it back, but it was too late. The documentary has archival footage of Bill doing a TV interview where he expresses the same remorse about selling Casa Bonita. In the late 2010s, before the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed many hospitality businesses, Casa Bonita (despite being run-down and having low-quality food) was getting about 5,000 customers a day. Casa Bonita shut down in 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And then, Casa Bonita declared bankruptcy.

Parker and Stone (the award-winning creators of the animated comedy series “South Park” and the stage musical “The Book of Mormon”) grew up in the Lakewood/Denver area and frequented Casa Bonita during their childhoods. “South Park” has had references to Casa Bonita and the Lakewood area in multiple episodes. In 2021, Parker and Stone announced that they had purchased Casa Bonita and planned to re-open it. “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” chronicles this turbulent journey, which includes the original re-opening budget of $6.5 million soaring to $40 million because of all the costs to repair the extensive damage and disrepair in Casa Bonita.

It’s important to have all of this background information (which the documentary includes) because there’s significant discussion in “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” about Parker and Stone wanting to preserve the restaurant’s original themes that highlighted Mexican heritage. (For example, mariachi bands have been a vital part of Casa Bonita’s live entertainment.) The documentary shows Parker traveling to Mexico with Dana “Loca” Rodriguez, who was hired to be the executive chef of the re-opened Casa Bonita, so that Parker can learn more about Mexican food, drinks and culture.

However, the documentary shows that in the months leading up to restaurant’s re-opening in June 2023, Parker (who is more personally involved than Stone in re-opening Casa Bonita) is more concerned about the very Anglo-American aspects of the entertainment at Casa Bonita. He fixates on small details, such as changing an animatronic cowboy’s wardrobe to wear a Farrah Fawcett T-shirt when Parker makes an inconvenient decision to suddenly revamp the cowboys in Casa Bonita to be from the 1970s instead of the 1870s. This decision is a direct result of Parker’s childhood memories of going to Casa Bonita when he was a kid in the 1970s.

In another scene in the documentary, Parker is shown getting inspiration for Casa Bonita not from native Mexican culture but from hearing that Elvis Presley starred in a 1963 movie called “Fun in Acapulco.” “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” predictably includes clips from the movie but repeatedly erase native Mexican culture from the documentary. If not for the name of the restaurant, you could watch this documentary and think that it’s not even a Mexican restaurant because of how Mexican culture is diminished or ignored in the movie.

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” has a few scenes that briefly show some Mexican-themed entertainment and decor, such as a mariachi band and some Day of the Dead decorations and props. However, “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” fails to mention what Parker learned from his trip or trips to Mexico. Instead, the documentary shows Parker making a series of joking quips every time he gets more bad news about something that will delay or increase the cost of re-opening Casa Bonita.

Casa Bonita executive chef Rodriguez is the only person of color who is shown in a leadership role for Casa Bonita. She has an interesting background that is quickly mentioned in the documentary. In a documentary interview, Rodriguez (who immigrated from Mexico the United States in 1998) says that she applied for a dishwasher job at Casa Bonita shortly after moving to the area. She was rejected because she was told she wasn’t qualified. Rodriguez says she got her nickname Loca (which means crazy female in Spanish) when she went on a rant against a racist who scolded her for speaking Spanish in an incident that didn’t take place at Casa Bonita.

Years later, Parker says in the documentary that Rodriguez was his first choice to hire as the re-opened Casa Bonita’s executive chef, based on recommendations and his “gut instinct.” When she was hired for the re-opened Casa Bonita, Rodriguez had become the James Beard-nominated owner/executive chef of Cantina Loca. (Cantina Loca closed for business in 2024). Rodriguez going from being a rejected dishwasher applicant to an executive chef at Casa Bonita is an ironic and incredible comeback story that “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” seems to dismiss by only showing Rodriguez attending Casa Bonita staff meetings or being a travel guide for Parker during their trip to Mexico.

For a documentary about the re-opening of a restaurant, executive chef Rodriguez and her staff don’t get as much screen time as they should. The documentary features several interviews with unnamed customers who say they want the re-opened Casa Bonita to have better food than the original Casa Bonita. And yet, the items on the menu and the dynamics of the kitchen and server staff are never detailed. (Showing a plate of soft tacos being served doesn’t count.)

There are a few short scenes where an unidentified kitchen manager shows concerns about how the computer-operated machines were not working correctly in taking custom orders, so those glitches needed to be corrected. There are no scenes of Rodriguez training any kitchen staff or showing how she created the revamped Casa Bonita’s new menu. She did all of that, of course, but it’s just not in this movie.

Instead, “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” spends a lot of time showing construction manager Scott Shoemaker fretting and fuming about all the costs and delays involved in renovating Casa Bonita. (An epilogue in the movie mentions that Shoemaker and Rodriguez fell in love and became a couple, but whatever romance they had is not in the documentary.) Casa Bonita art director Chris Spellman, Dan Jennison of Jennison Studios, Charles S. McQuerry of Show Construction and project electrician Steve Bender are among those who provide commentary about the renovations.

Also featured are Casa Bonita entertainment director Ben Schrader and Casa Bonita entertainment manager Amber Blais, who supervise the costumed entertainers who depict characters in the restaurant. When Parker admittedly causes chaos by making drastic changes on short notice, Blais is seen tactfully navigating these changes and saying that they can make the adjustments. (After all, she’s not going be foolish enough to go on camera to complain about one of the owners of the place that’s employing her.)

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” shows in great detail how Parker and Stone see firsthand that they bought a dump filled with safety violations and health hazards. When Parker visits the closed Casa Bonita after becoming a co-owner, he quips that the restaurant still has the same familiar smell of “chlorine and beans.” Parker is more hands-on in the renovation process, which Stone freely admits he is more comfortable letting Parker handle. “He’s a romantic,” Stone says of Parker’s attitude about revamping Casa Bonita. “The kid in him is very much alive.”

Stone and Parker, who are based in the Los Angeles area, are shown commuting to Casa Bonita in between doing their work for “South Park” in Los Angeles. The documentary includes some footage of the duo recording some “South Park” voice sessions. South Park” and “The Book of Mormon” executive producer Anne Garefino provides some short commentary about Parker and Stone having to juggle their “South Park” jobs with the Casa Bonita commitments.

Among the problems encountered in renovating Casa Bonita includes an indoor diving pool where the diver employees had a very unsafe area to change outfits where they could’ve easily been electrocuted. The restaurant had a lot of outdated electrical wiring and deteriorating equipment. One of the most alarming discoveries was a massive structure beam that had no foundation (there was literally a hole where the floor should’ve been to hold up the beam), and this defective beam would’ve caused the building to collapse if there had been an earthquake-level shake-up to the building.

The documentary includes interviews with several former associates of Casa Bonita, including Phil Phillips, the restaurant’s original designer and builder. He remembers the reaction when people saw and heard about the flamboyantly pink Casa Bonita: “Every single person from Denver said, ‘Why are you doing this? This is not going to work. Nobody is going to come here.” Proving the skeptics wrong, Casa Bonita became an immediate hit, although the restaurant’s eventual decline tarnished its reputation.

An eclectic mix of other former Casa Bonita employees also give sound bites in the documentary interviews. The former employees include Paul Vinyard, who was Casa Bonita’s president from 1975 to 1981; Paul Lang, Casa Bonita’s first art director; and Don Shannon, who worked for Casa Bonita from 1981 to 1990. Some of them have fond memories of Casa Bonita, while others do not. Chad Wonder, who was a Casa Bonita magician in 2015, says: “The cave smelled like urine.” Jim “JB” Brown, who was a Casa Bonita employee from 1974 to 1980, says he became so disgusted by the slovenly conditions at Casa Bonita, he contacted corporate headquarters to request that his name be removed from the employee honor roll that was listed at the restaurant.

Also interviewed in the documentary, with only quick comments shown, are Don Whitcomb, author of “The Casa Bonita You Never Knew”; Ramiro Cazaux, art director of Park County; Carly Pric, company manager of Park County; Bethel Lindsley, Casa Bonita dive team leader; and Casa Bonita employee Luis Barron Elias, who says of Casa Bonita: “We like to say it’s our restaurant because it’s our family.”

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” includes a few appearances by Colorado governor Jared Polis, who obviously has a friendly relationship with Parker and Stone. Polis is shown during an on-stage speaking appearance at a “South Park” 25th anniversary concert in 2022, at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado. Polis half-jokingly comments on stage that Colorado went from having the 9th lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. to the 4th lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. because of the contractors and subcontractors working at Casa Bonita.

Despite all the trials and tribulations, Parker and Stone show determination in seeing things through, even though their Casa Bonita investment is considered to be a “money pit.” Parker says repeatedly that his commitment to the project has everything to do with wanting people to get the same feeling from Casa Bonita that he had as a child but make it an even better experience with big improvements from the original Casa Bonita. The documentary also features brief appearances from Trey’s father Randy Parker and Trey’s daughter Betty Parker, who give their reactions to the renovated Casa Bonita.

Because the outcome of this renovation is already well-known, there is no suspense in “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,” a documentary that is essentially another marketing tool for Casa Bonita. This documentary is from the perspective that makes it almost look like “The Trey Parker Show,” while everyone else is a supporting character. If people don’t mind seeing a very filtered look at what went into renovating and reopening this well-known restaurant, “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” can be entertaining enough to watch, even when you can tell that a lot of interesting things were left out of the movie.

MTV Documentary Films released “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” in Denver on September 6, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cities on September 13, 2024. Paramount+ will premiere the movie on October 2, 2024.