User Reviews

"Parabéns!" or "Happy Birthday" is a Portuguese 14-minute movie from 1997, so this one has its 20th anniversary this year. The writer and director is João Pedro Rodrigues and this is obviously a very early career effort by him, even if not his very first work. It is the story of a character named Chico and what happens to him on his 30th birthday. Sadly, like so many others, this film entirely relies on being a gay-themed movie and story-wise or character wise there is really almost absolutely nothing to see in here. It almost looked like a documentary of people filming their everyday lives and I don't mean this in a good way unfortunately. The pure looks of it all are indeed very amateurish and everything about the plot asks the question why this was even made as I see no story worth telling in here. If you still want to see it, then make sure you get a good set of subtitles unless you are fluent in Portuguese of course, but honestly I cannot think of any reason why you want to check it out and I really hope that JPR managed to step things up in the last two decades as I see he is still a prolific filmmaker today. Overall, a major thumbs-down here. Watch something else instead.