Welcome to the Family Review
Director: Mark Alazraki and Jorge Macaya
Date Created: 2025-03-12 23:14
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Welcome to the Family Review: Directed by Mark Alazraki and Jorge Macaya, Bienvenidos a la Familia is a Netflix’s Mexican comedy series featuring Marimar Vega, Erika Buenfil, Ana Layevska, Martín Altomaro, Carla Adell, Arturo Beristáin, Gerardo Taracena, Alondra García, Santiago Colores, Ricardo Selmen, Erick Elías, Jezzini, and others. The series has eight episodes, each approximately 30 minutes long, and provides a quick-paced ride of family drama, crime, and absurdity.
The series follows Cristina, who is a single mother and becomes homeless overnight due to the debts of her father and brother. When she moves back into her father’s house with her three children, trouble erupts when her father collapses dead, and she is omitted from the will. The only way she can provide for herself and her kids is to play the game, which results in a string of questionable choices, odd partnerships, and outlandish misadventures. Does this crime comedy deliver the laughs, or does it fall over its own feet?
Welcome to the Family Review
I like dark comedies and crazy family dramas when they’re well-executed, but this show is more of a never-ending loop of yelling, poor choices, and absurd shenanigans that quickly become exhausting. There’s a delicate balance between playful mayhem and annoying nonsense, and this show too often falls on the wrong side of it.
Netflix’s Welcome to the Family is a dysfunctional family life, over-the-top schemes, and ethically challenged decisions television show. The idea is good—a desperate mother plotting to reclaim what she perceives as her own, forced to work in a universe of bill collectors, legal loopholes, and opportunistic in-laws.
My biggest issue with the show is that virtually every single one of its characters is over-the-top to a degree of caricature. There’s this insistent sense of tension and urgency, which certainly fits Cristina’s plight, but it’s so on-it to an extent where there’s extremely little space to let in truly emotional moments. Cristina, who is played by Marimar Vega, is the sole character who has any depth to her—her desperation to feed her children is understandable, and her willingness to sacrifice her life for them is admirable.
The supporting actors range from selfish and manipulative to completely oblivious. Instead of offering an entertaining dynamic between Cristina and the rest of the family, the show milks them being absurd for the sake of humour too much. Some of the moments do work, but otherwise, the humour is monotonous and predictable.
Comedy is something that I think is difficult to do well, and Welcome to the Family series has trouble getting the balance between humour and narrative just right. The show is full of scenes that ought to be humorous—characters attempting to outwit one another, absurd misunderstandings, and surprise twists—but instead, many of these scenes come across as over-the-top and contrived. One of the biggest problems is that the actors scream, fight, and bellow at each other constantly, and it’s tiresome to watch.The show appears afraid of quiet as if a moment of breathing would tarnish the thrill. The reward? An endless barrage of noise that makes it hard to appreciate the rare few actually funny moments.
I also found that most of the jokes were predictable as well. Case in point is the whole hide-the-body thing. We’ve done this million times before, and while the show tries its best to create its own unique spin on the joke, they don’t put anything new out there. Likewise with the whole family scheming their way out of prison scenario—we’ve all done this to death in countless other comedies, and none of it provides anything new or interesting.
If you’ve watched enough crime comedies or dysfunctional family dramas, you can probably guess most of the major plot twists in this show in advance before they happen. A father exploiting his daughter? We’ve done this thousands of times. A family trying to cover up a death and fudge a will? Timeless classic. A hapless detective trying to prove themselves? Played out.
The problem isn’t that these things happen, but that the show doesn’t do anything particularly interesting with them. There isn’t really any suspense or surprise—everything happens in the most straightforward way possible.
While I have problems with the story and comedy, I do believe that the actors perform the best they can with the script they have. Marimar Vega gives a good performance as Cristina and is at least somewhat believable despite her poor choices. Erika Buenfil is also very strong, bringing charisma and energy to her character.
Summing Up
In the end, the Mexican comedy series Welcome to the Family attempts too much in trying to be humorous. The incessant screaming, clichéd plot, and over-the-top characters turn it into an infuriating experience instead of an enjoyable one. I will not be recommending this to anyone since there are much better dark comedies with more biting writing and more interesting characters.
2025 Welcome to the Family is now streaming on Netflix.
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