José Sánchez Mota (born on June 30, 1965), known simply as José Mota, is a Spanish comedian, active since 1989. He first rose to prominence as one half of comedy duo Cruz y Raya alongside Juan Muñoz. Since the duo's split in 2007 he has enjoyed a successful solo career, directing and starring in his own shows such as La hora de José Mota or José Mota presenta, aside from all the New Year's Eve specials he has done for TVE, where he has developed all of his television career except for a brief stint in Telecinco in 2013. In 2020 he signed with Antena 3 as one of the judges/investigators for the Spanish version of The Masked Singer, leaving the panel after the second season.
As a comedian, he is known by a very personal style of humor, heavily rooted on the culture of rural Spain and in particular of Castilla-La Mancha, his native region. Specializing in costumed sketches, he usually plays characters that are Spanish hillbillies, rednecks, country bumpkins or stereotypes of villagers, sometimes in conjunction with collaborators of his like Paco Collado, Javier Losán and formerly Pepe Carabias (as well as Juan Muñoz, his former partner in Cruz y Raya, who still works sporadically with him). He also has a penchant for slice-of-life sketches where he plays As Himself in bizarre situations.
He's also an usual voice actor — one of the most prominent Celebrity Voice Actors in Spain along with Florentino Fernández and Santiago Segura — for animated films and a few live-action ones. He started with Mushu in Mulan and peaking with Donkey in the Shrek franchise, in which his Cruz y Raya collaborator Muñoz voiced the title ogre. Tellingly, their colleague Carabias is another ubiquitous voice actor.
Filmography
Film
- Torrente Franchise - Various Roles in each film
- La chispa de la vida - Roberto (his most Playing Against Type / Tom Hanks Syndrome role)
- Abracadabra - Pepe
Dubbing
- Mulan - Mushu
- Shrek - Donkey
- Monsters, Inc. - Mike Wazowski
- 102 Dalmatians - Waddlesworth
- Brother Bear - Rutt
- Stuart Little 3 - Stuart Little
- Hellboy II: The Golden Army - Abe Sapiennote
- Rugrats Go Wild! - Spike
- Tad, the Lost Explorer - Freddy
- The Angry Birds Movie - Chuck
- Zookeeper - Donald the monkey
Tropes seen in Mota's work:
- Abhorrent Admirer: A non-romantic version with one of his recurring characters, El Cansino Histórico ("The Historic Tiresome Guy"). In each of his appearances, he bumps into an Historical Domain Character he claims to admire and tries to get them to drink with him, only for them to reject it, which has the effect of turning the Cansino massively angry at them. The character also featured some sketches in which he turned on the receiving part of a similar routine and realized how annoying it was.
- Acting for Four: A curious In-Universe instance in Operación: And the Andarán. King Philip VI tasks Mota with supplanting the four missing politicians to prevent the word from spreading over their accident.
- Actually Pretty Funny:
- He developed a real life friendship with Iker Jiménez, creator and presenter of legendary mystery investigation show Cuarto Milenio, after Jiménez laughed his ass off with Mota's hilarious parody of him.
- Some Spanish politicians, such as former Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, have also admitted to enjoying Mota's parodies of them.
- After the End: One of his shortest-lived shows, El Acabose, was set in a Bad Future resulting of Donald Trump accidentally nuking the Earth and wiping out almost all mankind.
- Arch-Enemy: Mota and collaborator Javier Losán often appear in sketches antagonizing each other, usually with violence and colourful insults and threats.
- Catchphrase: "Hoy no... mañaaaaaana" ("Not today... tomooooooorrow"), "Las gallinas que entran por las que salen" ("The hens coming in for the ones going out"), "¿Te has dado cuenta tú también?" ("You noticed that too?")
- Dramatic Thunder: Spoofed. In a Back to the Future parody, thunder strikes every time Doc says "future".
- Earth All Along: The Twist Ending of Operación: And the Andarán reveals that the island is actually Madrid in a distant future, complete with the ruins of the Spanish Congress of Deputies showing up.Antonio Hernando: Looks like those who followed us did even worse.
- Gratuitous English: If he's parodying an English-speaking celebrity, he'll probably use a strange mix of English and Spanish. Derived from this is his Catchphrase "behind the musgo", "musgo" being the Spanish word for "moss", which he first coined while impersonating Bear Grylls.
- How We Got Here: His 2017 New Year's Eve special, Bienvenido Mister Wan-Da begins with the titular character being crowned king of Spain, and the show's continuity plot revolves around the events that led there.
- National Stereotypes: Whenever there's a male Argentine character in his sketches — for whatever reason it's almost always male —, you can count on him being soccer-mad (this is justified as soccer really is Serious Business in Argentina), a psychologist, a Motor Mouth, or some combination of the three.
- Nosy Neighbor: Parodied with another recurring character, La Vieja del Visillo ("The Old Woman Behind the Lace Curtain"). She took the entire window wall with her to listen to other people's gossips, and somehow nobody ever noticed.Don't tell anybody about this... (after her interlocutor leaves) ...as I'll be telling it myself.
- Oh, Crap!: In Operación: And the Andarán, Donald Trump's reaction after he has just finished building the US-Mexico border wall... and discovers he's stuck on the Mexican side. He promptly tries to Mariachi his way out of trouble, to little avail.
- On a Soundstage All Along: He has at least twice done skits where his characters come to realize they are not real, but instead are just him in disguise playing them on a comedy sketch.
- Sketch Comedy: His specialty. He has starred and directed many TV shows of this kind, both with Cruz y Raya and on his own.
- Steal the Surroundings: In one of his sketches, a man has hired an advisor to help him sort out his financial issues. The advisor tries to convince him that there are plenty of things he doesn't need, and to make his point, every time he turns off the lights, one of the objects in the room they are in disappears. By the second-to-last iteration, only the walls and floor are left in the room... which then disappear in the last one, as the man somehow appears in the middle of a park when the lights come back on.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Also in Operación: And the Andarán. After the plane crash at the beginning, Commander España is on the island with Albert Rivera
, Mariano Rajoy, Antonio Hernando and Pablo Iglesias. He announces he has found the plane's rescue boat, but it has only room for three people. The four politicians start arguing over who should return, only to find out that the commander has decided to leave without them, tired of their endless bickering. - Super Zeroes: In the third season of La hora de José Mota, a new team of heroes is gathered to stand in for the late Tío La Vara. Most of them have very dubious or limited powers, but La Argamasa (a parody of The Incredible Hulk played by Pepe Carabias) takes the cake, having, according to Father Tornices, "infra-strength and retro-speed. I don't even know what's their use, but if they're there, they should have one." However, in a subversion, La Argmasa was actually an effective member of the group, showing the ability to do Offscreen Teleportation at will and to cause incapacitating Amusing Injuries.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Several of his New Year shows run on this: Ciudadano Kien to Citizen Kane, Es bello vivir to It's a Wonderful Life, Seven: Los siete pecados capitales de provincia to Se7en, Resplandor en Moncloa to The Shining, Operación: And the Andarán to Lost, Adiós dos mil vete (Cinema Paraeso) to Cinema Paradiso, Cuento de Vanidad to A Christmas Carol, and ¡Sálvese quien Putin! to Titanic. While he was in Cruz y Raya, Regreso al 2004 also referred to Terminator, and 2005... Repaso al futuro to Back to the Future.
