Desperados is an American Romantic Comedy film directed by LP and written by Ellen Rapoport. It was released in 2020 by Netflix.
The film follows Wesley (Nasim Pedrad), a young woman who is struggling in both her professional and romantic life and she bungles a job interview and her date with a man named Sean (Lamorne Morris) for being "too forthcoming". On her way home from the date, she ends up having a Crash-Into Hello meeting with Jared (Robbie Amell) and the two quickly hit it off, but Wesley makes an effort to hide her true self in order to make their relationship work.
After Jared and Wesley sleep together, he does not contact her for five days. Upset and assuming the worst of him, Wesley and her two best friends Brooke (Anna Camp) and Kaylie (Sarah Burns) get drunk and write a long ranting email to him. However, Jared calls Wes after that to inform her that he had gotten into a car accident in Mexico, which is why he wasn't contacting her. Wesley and her friends then decide to travel all the way to Mexico in order to delete the insulting email before Jared gets the chance to read it.
This film provides examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Wesley ends up getting electrocuted, punched, falling off dangerous heights, getting scratched by a cat and even getting slapped in the face by a dolphin's genitals
- Adolf Hitlarious: Kaylie's cat Kevin looks like he has a Hitler mustache, which Brooke jokes about.
- Be Yourself: Wesley tries to suppress her true self in order to make her relationship with Jared to work out, but untimely learns it's just a miserable experience for both learns is best to be appreciated for who she really is.
- Bad Date: Wesley's Blind Date with Sean goes terribly when she starts making too many references to marriage and kids.
- Butt-Monkey: Wesley is the butt of most of the jokes in the story, from her comically awful romantic and professional life, to getting into all sorts of humiliating situations. The story even starts with her car randomly getting hit by an electric pole.
- Cat Up a Tree: Wesley rescues Kaylie's cat who's stuck in a tree and ends up getting all stretched by him in the process.
- Closet Key: Angel de la Paz ends up becoming one for Brooke, who previously had only been in heterosexual relationships.
- Contrived Coincidence: Sean just happens to be staying at the very same hotel in Mexico that Jared was. For a moment, he even suspects Wesley is stalking him.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Kaylie hits the bottle hard after learning that she's unable to have children.
- Empty Fridge, Empty Life: Played With. When Wesley opens her fridge, we see she has some food in it, but at the same time, a recorded message reveals that the food was actually stolen from a child she babysits.
- Family Portrait of Characterization: In Wesley's house, we see various portraits of her with Kaylie and Brooke, with Brooke's husband being scribbled out since he cheated on her.
- Friendly, Playful Dolphin: During Wesley and Sean's boat ride, they meet a dolphin and Wesley is delighted when it comes to her, but it quickly becomes clear the dolphin is just horny and trying to hump her while she mistakenly thinks it's just hugging her.
- The Gambling Addict: Wesley used to be addicted to online gambling, at least according to her mother.
- Gay Best Friend: Kaylie befriends a Camp Gay guy in the Mexican hotel.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: After she gets locked out naked in the hotel, Wesley uses her arms and later a seat cushion to cover herself. Sometimes a Toplessness from the Back shot is used, with Scenery Censor covering her butt.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Kaylie and her husband Tad are unable to have children, while Brooke got pregnant b her cheating husband despite not wanting kids.
- Irrevocable Message: The whole story is about Wesley rushing to Mexico to try and delete the ranting email she sent to Jared while drunk and thinking her was ghosting her, while he was actually in a coma after having a car accident.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: A Running Gag has Wesley getting into accidentally inappropriate situations with the same small boy while on the hotel, such as dropping her dildo next to him, accidentally wandering into his room while dressed only in a towel or him giving her CPR when she passes out. It ends up with her getting expelled from the hotel.
- Modesty Bedsheet: When we see Wesley and Jared having sex, both of them are covered up by the bedsheet that goes up to their necks.
- My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Wesley is very distressed about being in her 30s and still unmarried and childless, especially since all her friends are getting hitched and starting families of their own.
- Naked People Are Funny: Wesley losing her towel and being forced to run through the hotel naked is Played for Laughs.
- Naked People Trapped Outside: Wesley attempts to fake having been locked out of her room in just a Modesty Towel to get the hotel staff to open Jared's room for her. It works, but it turns out the room they opened wasn't Jared, but instead the room of a small kid. She panics and tries to escape, but ends up losing the towel on a hook in the process and actually gets stuck outside for real. She ends up having to run through the hotel naked.
- Only One Name: None of the characters in the movie have a surname.
- On the Rebound: Brooke tries to have a "revenge affair" while on the hotel, to get back at her cheating husband. Her first attempt ends disastrously, but she ends up sleeping with Kaylie's shaman Angel de la Paz.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Wesley has the habit of putting herself into awkward situations by saying bizarre things, such as talking about masturbation to her job interviewer.
- Pop-Up Texting: When Wesley is writing her hate email to Jared, we get a pop-up screen showing its contents, including misspellings and autocorrections.
- Precocious Crush: A kid at the hotel ends up getting a crush on Wesley after she has a bunch of Accidental Pervert run-ins with him. It's played more for Cringe Comedy than adorableness and it gets Wesley Mistaken for Pedophile by the boy's mother.
- Romancing the Widow: Sean turns out to be a widow, and he admits that part of the reason his Blind Date with Wesley went so bad it's because it was his first date after his wife passed.
- Sex Goddess: Implied with Angel de la Paz, with Brooke still sated and purring hours after their sex.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: When Brooke and Angel de la Paz have sex, we only see Angel sliding down her body and Brooke's face as she visibly reacts to what Angel is doing, before the scene cuts off.
- Skeleton Key Card: Subverted, Wesley attempts to use a card to unlock Jared's hotel room, but she just ends up breaking it instead.
- Slapstick: Wesley gets all sorts of slapstick violence done to her during the film.
- Smoking Hot Sex: After Wesley gets humped by the Dolphin, Sean jokingly asks if she "needs a cigarette".
- Stalking Is Funny if It Is Female After Male: Sean explicitly mocks how Wesley's actions in trying to get Jared's computer make her look like a crazy stalker.
- Stripping Snag: While Wesley is trying to escape Nolan's room dressed only in a Modesty Towel, she ends up losing it when it gets caught in a hook.
- Teeny Weenie:
- The most common of the insults Wesley throws at Jared in the hate email is that his penis is too thin.
- When the Brooke's Jerkass date is leaving the table after confessing to having taken a Viagra, he uses a plate to cover his Raging Stiffie, and she promptly mocks how small the plate is.
- Vulgar Humor: The scene with the dolphin, where the dolphin first tries to hump Wesley and then gets slapped in the face by its genital while the dolphin is diving near her.
- Wrong Assumption: After Jared seemingly disappears from Wesley's life after they slept together, she and her friends assume he ghosted her and send him a elaborate hate email while drunk. But it turns out he was in a car accident instead, causing Wesley to freak out about the e-mail.
- Wrong Guy First: Played With. While Wesley has a short Blind Date with Sean, before getting into a doomed relationship with Jared. After bonding with Sean throughout the film, the two ultimately end up together.
