First I am gay so take the following seriously.This movie is boring and dull. It is not funny--it is a feel good attempt to make gays main stream although still plagued with bedevilments from straights--and make Spain seem to have arrived at the Dulce Vida. It is supposed to be a comedy and yes you smile at a few things but this thing is very badly written. It is cut up disjointed and boring.It follows several gay couples and their parents who are participating in a Spanish national first = a gay wedding of 20 couples at Hotel in Madrid. This premise is funny too bad the movie isn't.There is nothing funny about a gay man who falls for his mother in law...or one who ditches a dog in a park. The trade union leader of the hotel is the lover of the female owner so we get class things thrown in for more laughs. The gay stuff is enough adding class politics is not comedy stuff.There is something glib and very annoying about the whole movie.I finally pulled the plug half way through it was so irritating that it became unwatchable. The gimmicky plot technique that keeps skipping back in time didn't help---but the real problem is the movie is just boring garbage.DO NOT RECOMMEND

I must confess that the mixed IMDb reviews were the main reason I actually decided to watch the movie. I was expecting a typical wedding drama, only instead of a hetero-wedding, this would be a gay-wedding. But this movie is much more.The lives of five mothers and a father whose gay sons are getting married in a mass wedding ceremony, are interconnected and interwoven in totally hilarious, believable and fantastic situations. Like it's name suggests, the true heroines of the day are the mothers "Reinas - the Queens of the ceremony". The women, so totally different from each other, had one bond that would knowingly or unknowingly connect them in so many ways. The dog moving from one person to another, gave the impression of that connection.The direction was amazing, and the back and forth of the timelines gave it a unique feel. What happened that lead to the other happening that lead to the "now"... it was classic.The only thing that bothered me was that one unresolved issue, which constituted the final scene. But, I thought it was better to keep the issue unresolved than to acknowledge the destroyed relationships.It is a truly great film.

I saw this movie in Spain last month and think it is one of the more clever gay themed films I have seen in a while. Contrasting it with most of the U.S. gay films, it lacked the superfluous drug and sex clichés that those filmmakers seem to the think the gay audience demands. It didn't fall prey to the trite and camp that makes the genre so formulaic in this country, and will probably plague the English "remake" should there be one. More impressive, though, was that I think I was one of 6 gay people in an audience of about 100..this in a country that less than 40 years ago was suffocating under Franco's regime of control and censorship. Here is hoping one day that happens here!

Manuel Gómez Pereira was one of the finest Spanish directors in the 90's, with such comedies as "Boca a Boca" or "El Amor Perjudica Seriamente la Salud". His latest projects, however, tanked ("Off Key" was a failure both economically and artistically) or simply didn't deliver ("Cosas que Hacen que la Vida Valga la Pena" was plain and average)."Reinas" is Pereira's return to top form, with a clever and engaging plot which uses the celebration of the first gay wedding in Spain as a macguffin to tell the story of six gay men who are about to marry and their parents, especially their mothers. The film avoids clichés in an intelligent way, so the gay sons are portrayed as people from different social strata and conditions. The actors also avoid the affected mannerisms with which gays are often portrayed in cinema. Special mention to Gustavo Salmerón in a fine performance, although the rest are also very good.However, the film belongs to the mothers. They are in fact the "queens" the title refers to. Pereira has been lucky enough to assemble a bunch of our greatest actresses: Carmen Maura, Marisa Paredes, Mercedes Sampietro and Verónica Forqué. Betiana Blum, an unknown Argentinean actress, is, however, the standout with her over-the-top character, Ofelia.The story is very nice plot-wise and treats gay love stories in the same way it treats straight love stories. The screenplay manages a few laughs from the audience, and it is so action-packed that you never loose your attention from the film. The only flaw I can find is that it ends so abruptly that some of the story lines are left unexplained and some character arcs end up being implausible.In any case, I found the film highly satisfying and very entertaining, so if you like spending two hours with a good comedy you won't feel disappointed.Overall rating: 8/10