00:00Almost twenty years later, La Lola is still a story that needs to be told.
00:05I'd go further, it's a necessary story.
00:09I'm starting this video this way to talk about the Mexican series version of La Lola,
00:14which I started watching yesterday after finishing the original.
00:18For those who don't know it, this is an Argentine soap opera from 2007
00:22about a sexist, misogynistic womanizer named Lalo
00:27who falls under a spell that puts him in a woman's body.
00:35Feeling first-hand the machismo he himself preached,
00:40Lalo gradually becomes Lola, his female version.
00:45In 2024, VIX, Televisa's digital platform, created a series version.
00:52Before getting into the more serious themes,
00:55let me say that Barbara de Reguil's body motivated me to start working out again.
01:00Not that any of us will achieve those results,
01:03but it makes you want to at least try to gain ten percent of the muscle mass that woman has.
01:10Now, moving on to my first impressions.
01:12The comedy is even more over the top,
01:15and the spell plot is more fantastical than in the original.
01:19Sometimes the humor goes too far for my taste,
01:22but the original also had its slapstick moments,
01:26so overall it doesn't hurt the story.
01:28This version hits harder on the critique of women's position in the workplace,
01:35especially when Lola panics after seeing her salary cut in half
01:40for taking the place of her supposed cousin.
01:43But why should I do exactly what my cousin used to do?
01:47Another employee at the company,
01:49who in the previous version was a shallow villain
01:52who only thought about sex and causing trouble,
01:54gives the newcomer a reality check.
01:57Honey, I've been here for years.
01:59I have a postgraduate degree,
02:01and I've never signed a project in this place.
02:04Just sign that contract,
02:06and let's be partners in misery.
02:08The original didn't go as deep into these issues,
02:12and here I applaud the remake
02:14for already showing signs of not being a lazy copy.
02:18In fact, it was a disappointment to me
02:20that the original treated Grace's and Lola's careers
02:23so lightly at the end.
02:26Grace was a successful radio host.
02:29Every bus stop in the show had a poster of her show,
02:32and she loved what she did.
02:35After fighting so much to keep her job at the radio station,
02:39in the end, she quits everything
02:41and goes off to live like a retired lady
02:44in one of those mobile trailers
02:45married to Lolo's crazy old boss.
02:50Honestly, I thought her ending was a load of crap.
02:53I don't think Alexa, her Mexican counterpart,
02:56will share the same fate.
02:58Lolo's career also ended up undefined
03:01after she fought so hard for her position.
03:04Some changes were made,
03:06and they make sense given the times.
03:08It's no longer a magazine,
03:10but an audiovisual production company
03:12that sells series and such to streaming services.
03:17Alexa's show is no longer limited
03:19to traditional radio,
03:21since today that format has been replaced
03:23by the podcasts we consume online.
03:26One thing I really liked
03:28is that at the end of each episode,
03:30there's a different mini-sketch
03:32with a woman putting a stop
03:33to a sexist husband or giving advice.
03:38Beyond criticizing the workplace,
03:40the series tries to tell all women
03:42that they don't have to put up
03:44with a lot of things.
03:47Now for the biggest disappointment.
03:49I swear when I look at this version's Facundo,
03:52all I can see is a grandma boy
03:55sitting in front of the TV
03:56waiting for the cookies to finish baking.
03:59It's not that the original Facundo
04:01was a well of personality,
04:03but he had sauce.
04:06Actually, he was about 986 different kinds of sauce
04:10in a hot body with the aura
04:12of a sexy, cute, and tender artist.
04:15At least so far,
04:16this Facundo is a completely faded character.
04:19No charisma, a goofball with no salt,
04:22and even less sauce.
04:24It might improve, we'll see,
04:26but there's also the aggravating factor
04:28that they took away his single dad storyline,
04:31which was one of the first things
04:33that helped shape the character,
04:35and gave it to Lalo.
04:37Actually, since I'm still at the beginning,
04:39maybe this Facundo is a dad too,
04:41but so far, nothing.
04:43Lalo's daughter is no longer a child,
04:46but a teenager who suffers bullying at school
04:49for being introverted and weird.
04:51Only Lalo was an absent father
04:53while Facundo lived for his daughter.
04:56Now, as Lola,
04:57the protagonist will try to be a better mother
05:00than she was a father,
05:01but posing as a psychologist
05:03since she can't tell her daughter the truth.
05:05She does tell her mother, though,
05:08a character who gains more relevance in this version.
05:11Another thing that took the charm out of Facundo
05:13is that in this version,
05:15he didn't have that initial clash with Lalo,
05:18which gave a special spice to their story as a couple.
05:22In the only scene we've seen of the two together,
05:25they were drinking beer at a bar,
05:27and Facundo was a complete amoeba
05:29who could barely hold a two-word conversation.
05:32Seriously, they're going to have to improve this guy a lot
05:36for him to be shippable with Lola.
05:38Two machos with opposite personalities
05:40who hate each other at work and then fall in love?
05:44Now that's pure gold.
05:46Other characters who are different
05:47are the boss and his daughter.
05:49The original Aguirre wasn't much,
05:52but he was a more comic and eccentric character.
05:55In this version,
05:56he's that sexist boss we hate right away,
05:59which fits perfectly with an Alexis Ayala character.
06:03But that makes sense because of what I said
06:06about the series seeming to want to hit harder
06:08on workplace machismo.
06:10As for his daughter, Natalia,
06:12she went from a completely crazy, spoiled nepo baby
06:16to a feminist who hates her boss's sexism.
06:21Feminist only up to page two,
06:23since she only joined the production company
06:25to get closer to Facundo,
06:27the personality-free grandma boy.
06:30She'll probably lose it at some point,
06:32but so far it's a version
06:34more connected to the real world.
06:37To wrap up,
06:38the charisma and magic of the original
06:40are in-beatable,
06:41but the series has its positive points,
06:44and I'll keep watching to see where it goes.
