‘Mad Bills to Pay’ Review: A 19-Year-Old Nutty Salesman Prepares for Fatherhood in a Portrait of Innocence That Isn’t Quite Lost

There’s something deeply comedic about hearing the word “nutty” repeatedly come up in a serious conversation about finances. Nutcrackers, as they’re formally called, are homemade cocktails of sugary fruit drinks and cheap liquor that daydrinkers hide in plastic bottles for beach consumption. They’re also the bedrock of Rico’s (Juan Collado) burgeoning underground beverage empire. The 19-year-old Bronx resident spends his summer days combing beaches with a cooler full of nutties, selling flavors like the lemon-flavored Pikachu and the pink Kirby Punch for $15, two for $10, or if a customer is pretty enough, an Instagram follow. He’s convinced that the hustle will snowball into a business that affords him a house and a car in no time at all. His looming success is such an inevitability that the details are irrelevant to him.

Rico’s blind self-confidence imbues him with some all-American charm, but the three women in his life aren’t so bullish on his career. He has quite a few problems that can’t be solved with nutties — namely a baby due in seven months with his 16-year-old girlfriend Destiny (Destiny Checo). The couple still live with Rico’s Mami (Yohanna Florentino) and younger sister Sally (Nathaly Navarro), both of whom are determined to make Rico understand the massive responsibilities that are coming his way. They’re so concerned about his inability to be a parent that everyone has temporarily looked the other way about the statutory rape of it all.

That juxtaposition between idyllic summer hijinx and adult responsibilities forms the backdrop of “Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo).” Joel Alfonso Vargas’ feature directorial debut is a vibrant tableau of life in the tight-knit Dominican communities of The Bronx, capturing the joys and tragedies of Rico’s life with such specificity that they eventually become impossible to separate from one another. Vargas and cinematographer Rufai Alaja deploy a 4:3 aspect ratio to create a square frame that invokes the warm feeling of flipping through old Polaroids. As the young entrepreneur meanders through life, hawking nutties and trying to pick up girls when he forgets that he’s spoken for, it feels like we’re looking back on the final summer of his youth with the benefit of hindsight from an inevitable future that hasn’t happened yet.

Rico is the only male character of any significance in “Mad Bills to Pay,” and the lack of masculine presence looms over the entire film as the missing piece of Rico’s puzzle. His mother does an admirable job of trying to keep him out of trouble, even if her efforts to steer him away from the paths that kept his father out of his life strike Rico as attempts to neuter his free spirit. Rico’s grandiose dreams of making money and being a provider without any real sense of true responsibilities are the words of a young man who grew up without a father and is sprinting toward adult archetypes he’s in no way ready for.

“Mad Bills to Pay” rests on the performances of Collado and Checo, both first-time actors who carry the understated film on their shoulders. Rico is charismatic to the point where watching him do just about anything would be entertaining, and his youthful delusions of grandeur would be sincerely endearing were he at a point in life that afforded him more time to figure himself out. Checo’s Destiny is incredibly shy when we first meet her, approaching conversations with all the paralysis you’d expect from a high schooler moving in with the disappointed family of her legal adult baby daddy. A small percentage of Rico’s confidence eventually rubs off on her, and a bit of her prudence on him — not nearly enough for either of their flaws to be expunged in time for parenthood, but enough to leave us with the sense that life will go on.

For a film about two young people who are ill-prepared for a massive life event, “Mad Bills to Pay” is brilliantly restrained about where everybody ends up. Nobody undergoes a massive arc that fixes everything, nor are we shown any of the parenting moments that will pose true challenges to Rico and Destiny. Instead, Vargas leaves us with the sense that the world will keep spinning as the young couple tries to figure things out. Unplanned circumstances seldom end like a movie, and Rico might not achieve his dream of retiring at 40 to hang out with his adult kids. But when the sun rises tomorrow, he’ll keep finding his way in the world one nutty at a time.

Grade: A-

“Mad Pills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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