The Year my Parents Went on Vacation is a pretty involving little movie taking place during the military dictatorship in Brazil, with all things revolving around the impending World Cup. The second half of the movie is outstanding--it just took me a while to get there, because I was bored to tears with the first half.
The slow beginning is a result of lingering upon well-trodden and predictable plot devices. We know that we are in dictatorial Brazil, and Mauro's (the kid, played magnificently by Michel Joelsas) parents are going on vacation and leaving him behind. They are nervous, anxious, agitated, and keep looking long and sadly at their son. And we are led, basically spoon-fed, to believe that Mauro's parents are probably radical leftists, fleeing repression and an almost certain arrest. This would be fine if it were not dwelled upon for 10 minutes--there are so many innuendos as to the parents' political affiliation and the fact that they probably won't return from their vacation that it's difficult to believe that Mauro wouldn't catch on. Cao Hamburger attempts to capture the naivete of youth and does so successfully, but he lingers upon it too long, and it becomes irrelevant.
The next half an hour or so is spent resolving a sticky conflict that was made prominent when Mauro arrives at his grandfather's retirement community (I won't reveal it, but needless to say, you can see it coming). Everything is set up. Mauro is stuck at a mostly Jewish retirement community, with a reluctant old man named Schlomo (Germano Haiut, who also turns a solid performance) who is aloof about the boy for a while, but then later has a the Gratuitous Change of Heart and searches endlessly for the boy's parents.
The second half of the film abandons the cliched, unnecessarily emotional set-up for some politically charged and genuinely moving scenes. The characters are finally drawn to full potential. The plot finally thickens. The nostalgia of childhood is finally captured, making the finale all the more haunting. It is a great finish to an otherwise unimpressive movie.