¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is kind of like Kitchen Nightmares but with celebrities and a beloved artifact of kitschy 1970s Colorado history.

The celebrities in question are Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the successful duo behind Cannibal: The Musical, South Park, The Book of Mormon, and many more. As for the kitschy 1970s Colorado restaurant—that would be Casa Bonita, located in a Lakewood strip mall off Colfax Boulevard since 1974. For anyone driving by or dining inside it, Casa Bonita is one-of-a-kind, even if it isn’t (the concept first appeared in Oklahoma in 1968).

That history you’ll learn if you visit Casa Bonita, but not if you watch ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, the documentary from Arthur Bradford about the South Park duo’s seemingly endless hurdles to reopen the restaurant after buying it out of bankruptcy court in 2022.

There’s a lot of history and tangential information that Mi Amor passes by: from the makeup of the neighborhood to other efforts to save the beloved restaurant. The construction’s impact on the surrounding businesses goes unmentioned, and man-on-the-street interviews give the impression that Casa Bonita is so integral to the identity of the Denver Metro Area that it was all anyone was talking about. (It wasn’t.)

But the business of criticism isn’t to review what’s not in the frame—and honestly, a lot of that is only relevant to locals, and few of them even then—but what is in the frame. And what is, is a fun, light, entertaining piece of PR showing that Parker and Stone might have been the only ones foolish enough to try and restore Casa Bonita to what it once was, only better. “Change nothing, improve everything” was their guiding purpose. What they meant was food, service, and experience. What they got was unsafe HVAC ducts, faulty electrical wiring, and corroded plumbing.

If anything could have gone wrong with Casa Bonita, it did. As many contractors state in the documentary, it’s sheer luck no one died there. Anyone else would have walked away from the unsalvagable restaurant, taken the $10 million loss, and moved on to the next project. Not Parker and Stone. They have the money and the desire to see the restaurant of their childhood live on for future generations. They planned for $4 million in renovations, “Carpet and paint,” Stone says as he takes the initial tour. It ended up being $40 million.

Many people refer to Casa Bonita as the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants. It’s a descriptive analogy that immediately communicates aesthetics and emotion. But the comparisons between Casa Bonita and Disneyland are deeper than you might expect. One hundred years before Parker and Stone reopened the new and improved Casa Bonita for guests, brothers Walt and Roy Disney started a small animation company in Kansas City and went on to invigorate and reinvent the medium on their way to fame and fortune. And after three decades at the top, Walt decided to open a theme park. It was supposed to be a small park, someplace where parents and children could spend Saturdays together, but it ballooned into a construction nightmare, a logistic headache, and a massive money sink that Roy had to navigate.

And it’s become one of the most popular destinations in the world. That’s what the two award-winning animators from Colorado are hoping for, too. Lucky for them, the first year of Casa Bonita’s reinvigorated existence was a smashing success, and business doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! (2024)
Directed by Arthur Bradford
Produced by Jennifer Ollman
Starring: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Anne Garefino
MTV Documentary Films, Not rated, Running time 88 minutes, Premiered June 7, 2024 at the Tribeca Film Festival

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