Can anyone shed any light on jokes in this movie that only a Cuban would get?Like the running gag about buying a green dwarf? I think the film is quite enjoyable without explanation, but it would be fun to hear some of these.
shareThere are definitely jokes at the expense of Spaniards and the differences between the Spanish and the Cubans. The boss of the delivery company is Spanish and his crew rag on him mercilessly. I don't speak a lick of Spanish, but even I can recognise that the crews' blue-collar Cuban accent, with the dragged out vowels and the dropped 's', is exaggerated to contrast to the boss's hysterical, machine-gun Castillian delivery. He's uptight, they're work-shy. They think he's a dumb Spaniard, he screams at them that without the Spanish, the Cubans would just be Taino and Guanajatabey (pre-Columbus Cuban peoples) with bunches of feathers up their arses.
There's one joke where two locals laugh at the tourists walking on "fools' side of the road", in the searing heat. A small man appears and asks which one is the fools' side, and the wags tell him, of course, it's the one in the shade. The man dashes out to the sunny side, very pleased with himself. They locals ask "you really are Angulo's cousin, aren't you?", and he says "who's Angulo?". I would think this is some sort of "they took the word gullible out of the dictionary" joke, but I don't know what it means.
I thought that the "green dwarfs for sale!" was just a ridiculous password, with the punchline being that someone finally comes along who *is* selling them, but what do I know?
("Fools' side of the road" was "idiots' pavement" in a different version of the subtitles, and "green dwarfs for sale" was "the green dwarf seller".)
"Rey del mundo..me prestas un cigarrito ahi Rey del Mundo, psst oye no te pongas bravo"
shareAngulo's cousin is a cuban joke about that the word angulo rimes with Culo(A$$ in spanish) it means something like you really are a jacka$$
shareThe joke about the Spaniard is all about Cubans making fun of the "gallego", a general term that most Cubans use to refer to Spanish people, regardless of the region they might come from. Not all Spanish are really "gallegos", but the term is deeply rooted in Cuban culture. The point of the joke is that "gallegos" have a reputation for not being very smart, kind of dumb actually, so the guys there are making fun of him like he's so smart he actually managed to talk on the phone (like they weren't smart enough to do such a simple thing), to which the "gallego" replies that if it wasn't by the Spanish, most original Cubans (natives) would still be hanging round naked and with feathers "up their asses" (which is totally untrue, as Cuban aborigines never wore feathers of any kind, like American indians did), so that makes him even more ignorant still.
The Angulo joke is kind of rough and might be too rude for most people. Angulo rhymes with "culo" (ass), so in Cuban terms, you are NEVER supposed to reply "who's Angulo", because the answer would be "el que te partio el culo" (the one who busted your ass!!!". Too rude! This might not be funny for Europeans, but to us Cubans, first time I heard that joke in a movie, I nearly piss myself in laughter, of finding such an idiotic guy who didn't have a clue and fell for it. Kind of Bart Simpson regularly calling the bartender and asking for isolated names, that make full sense when put together.
"Fool's side of the road" is the sunny side. No reasonable Cuban will ever walk on that side, because the sun is too strong and you would end up burning. Only silly tourists do, so they were making fun of the tourist, directing them exactly to the opposite side of the road, just for fun!!!
lol, the Angulo joke is so mean!
Before your explanation, I only caught the surface joke of a boss arguing with his lazy employees. The movie was pretty funny even without knowing all the little Cuban inside jokes, but I think knowing them makes it even funnier.
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I ain't your friend, palooka.
The cuban sense of humour sometimes could be difficult to catch for non-cubans, but overall the humour in ¡Vampiros en La Habana! is universal. Having said that, cubans in first place and latin-americans in second place (spaniards as well) could relate easier and to understand better some of the punch lines because the english subs sometimes doesn't translate correctly what it's said in the movie.
Certain expressions are typical of Cuba, however I had no problem to understand 99% of the jokes, but then I speak spanish. Anyway you don't have to be latin-american in order to understand the jabs directed at the blood-sucker capitalists! hehehe The animation perhaps is poor but the script is ingenious, witty and funny as hell.
¡Vampiros en La Habana! is beyond any doubt one of most irreverent and funniest animated movies I've ever seen.