{"id":151366,"date":"2025-08-16T20:28:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T20:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/151366\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T20:28:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T20:28:23","slug":"women-wearing-shoulder-pads-review-a-perfect-unexpected-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/151366\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Women Wearing Shoulder Pads’ review: A perfect, unexpected show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the annals of things I could not have seen coming, none has been more unexpected than \u201cWomen Wearing Shoulder Pads,\u201d a queer Spanish-language stop-motion comedy melodrama, set in the aesthetic world of a 1980s Pedro Almod\u00f3var film<\/a>. (It arrives Sunday at midnight on Adult Swim, the home of things one doesn\u2019t see coming, and premieres the next day on HBO Max.)<\/p>\n

Though it takes place in Ecuador, its central character, Marioneta Negocios (Pepa Pallar\u00e9s), is Spanish, and it\u2019s easy enough to imagine Almod\u00f3var muse Carmen Maura in the role \u2014 though it is also impossible to imagine the story told as well, or at all, in any other way. When I call this series perfect, notwithstanding the happy imperfections of its puppets and sets, it\u2019s not because everything works as its meant to, but because there\u2019s nothing you can measure it against \u2014 it occupies its own self-created space. Every element is necessary. Even presenting it in English would be to lose romantic, dramatic, telenovelistic force.<\/p>\n

At the center of the story is the cuy, a guinea pig eaten in Andean South America, though in this telling they\u2019re also used in a version of bullfighting. (Some cuys are large enough to ride on.) The primary action is a power struggle between Marioneta, a socialite running a campaign promoting cuy as pets, not food, and Do\u00f1a Quispe (Laura Torres), who has risen from life as a humble butcher to the anything-but-humble CEO of the country\u2019s most famous restaurant, El Cuchillo (the knife). <\/p>\n

Mixed up in their lives are Coquita Buenasuerte (Gabriela Cartol), Marioneta\u2019s seemingly happy-go-lucky assistant; Espada Muleta (Kerygma Flores), a matadora in love with Marioneta; Nina (Nicole Vazquez), Do\u00f1a Quispe\u2019s vegetarian daughter, serving a pro-cuy group as its Minister of Refreshments and Head of Recruitment for Rebellious Teens \u2014 \u201cI have looked upon the caged cuy through the prison of capitalist enterprise, through the hubristic iron bars of a homocentric world view\u201d \u2014 who will become a pawn in the older women\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

Not everything will be as it seems.<\/p>\n

Created by Gonzalo Cordova (a veteran of \u201cTuca & Bertie\u201d<\/a> and \u201cAdam Ruins Everything\u201d<\/a>) and produced by the Mexican animation studio Cinema Fantasma, the series comes packaged as eight 11-minute episodes \u2014 that is cartoon length \u2014 which neatly constitute a short feature film. On the bill are mystery, suspense, terror, revenge, hot romance (including some puppet sex), masked stalkers, performance art, love notes posted with knives, parodies of television shows and commercials, old secrets coming to light and nuns singing karaoke.<\/p>\n

From \u201cGumby\u201d<\/a> to \u201cRudolph\u201d<\/a> to \u201cWallace and Gromit\u201d<\/a> to \u201cThe Fantastic Mr. Fox,\u201d<\/a> stop motion is of all forms of animation most magical and in its real-space, three-dimensional, handcrafted way the most like life, if not necessarily the most lifelike. (It can look ungainly, which is also part of its charm.) It\u2019s a magnification of childhood playtime, a puppet show in which the puppets have broken loose from the puppeteers. The cleverness of the execution is as or more important than how seamless it is. \u201cWomen Wearing Shoulder Pads\u201d does all sorts of neat tricks, some you notice and more you simply accept \u2014 and when deemed necessary, or just amusing, it will insert a live-action hand or mouth. It\u2019s an exaggerated world \u2014 appropriately to the heavy-breathing material \u2014 but emotionally expressive, even moving, and lots of fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the annals of things I could not have seen coming, none has been more unexpected than \u201cWomen…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":151367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[88800,1582,276,88799,33011,88796,88798,47328,2961,2252,224,5337,4818,88795,50321,2290,6166,88797,17823,11459],"class_list":{"0":"post-151366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-adult-swim","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-combine-pedro-almodovar","12":"tag-commercial","13":"tag-cuy","14":"tag-dona-quispe","15":"tag-knife","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-life","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-love","21":"tag-marioneta-negocios","22":"tag-puppet","23":"tag-review","24":"tag-series","25":"tag-shoulder-pads","26":"tag-thing","27":"tag-woman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115040334871355984","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}