Bob Trevino Likes It (2024)

Connection is a tenuous thing. We’re all a bit broken, but we’re gonna be OK. That’s what Bob Trevino Likes It’s Bob Trevino (John Leguizamo) tells Lily (Barbie Ferreira) on their camping trip to see the comets flash across the sky. And it lands, because Lily’s reality is anything but steady. She has a complicated, exhausting relationship with her actual father (the original Bob Trevino, French Stewart) —one where she’s used as a wing woman when it’s convenient and discarded just as quickly when it’s not. Lily spends all her time trying to get it right with him, chasing something that never quite shows up. And when she finally realizes that relationship isn’t gonna work, she reaches for something—anything—that might. That’s where the other Bob Trevino comes in. He becomes the unexpected chance at real care and real love. It’s no spoiler to say he knows early on this isn’t a role he should be playing in her life, but he chooses to anyway, because he understands something simple and devastating: people need care, and sometimes being broken is still better than being completely lost.

The humanity of a film like Bob Trevino Likes It doesn’t come from just staring at the broken pieces or dressing up pain with easy smiles. It comes from the quiet, uncomfortable truth that nobody has it perfect, and nobody has it figured out. Barbie Ferreira is phenomenal here, in a way that feels overdue. This is the role that lets her show just how precise she is—how she can be emotionally present and completely shut down at the same time, and make both feel real. She is the heart of this film. Without her, the story doesn’t just lose impact—it loses its pulse. And Lily isn’t fragile. That’s the easy label, and it would be wrong. She’s strong in the way people are when they don’t have a choice. She keeps going, even while knowing the answers she wants may never come. And what’s powerful is that the film never has her spell that out. You don’t hear it—you watch her live it, in the smallest, most human ways. That’s what Tracie Laymon understands, and it’s what she draws out of both her writing and her actors.

John Leguizamo and French Stewart are fantastic as the two very different Bob Trevinos. Leguizamo brings a warmth that feels earned, not forced—kind, steady, but carrying the weight of everything his character has already lost. There’s a gravity to him that makes every moment land just a little harder. Stewart, on the other hand, leans all the way in the opposite direction. Known for comedy, he turns that energy into something sharp and grating. He’s dismissive, forgetful, selfish in a way that feels painfully real. Watching him is frustrating on purpose—and it needs to be. Because if he weren’t that petulant, that abrasive, that wrapped up in himself, Lily’s pain wouldn’t hit the way it does.

This is a film that doesn’t just ask you to watch it—it makes you sit in it. It doesn’t excuse its characters’ mistakes, but it refuses to condemn them outright, choosing instead to show that even when things fall apart, there’s still a path forward. Sometimes connection—real, unexpected, outside connection—is the only thing holding us together. And sometimes it comes from the last place you’d expect. At its core, this is a story about one connection that helped heal two people. And it feels necessary. Not just in film, but in the world we’re living in. We’re constantly told the world is cold, that people are distant, that kindness is rare. This film pushes back on that. It says it doesn’t have to be that way. Because in the end, it’s not the connection itself that heals Lily—it’s the understanding and empathy behind it. If we had more of that, like Bob Trevino says, we might actually find our way. And maybe, in the process, we’d finally start to understand ourselves a little better.