Hugo Rodríguez's Ella Es Ramona is a light comedy with some dark streaks. The plus-sized Ramona (Andrea Ortega Lee) is forever treated like she's less of a person because there's more of her physically. After being fired from her administrative job at a cosmetics company for no real reason other than not being skinny ("This company is devoted to feminine beauty ... you are overweight, Ramona"), her life continues to crumble until she happens upon a psychic selling wish-granting beetles. (It's a thing.) Though the dialogue isn't quite as snappy, Ella Es Ramona has an Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt colorfulness to it, combined with a telenovela artificiality befitting its country of origin; it is at times downright soapy, and that's not a complaint. Ella Es Ramona demonstrates that fat-shaming is by no means limited to the United States; we see in flashback that Ramona has been teased and mocked for her size all her life, and even as an adult people say horrible things while she's in earshot, as though being fat means she's also hard of hearing. She's not one of the credited writers, but one suspects that the charming and charismatic Andrea Ortega Lee was able to draw from personal experiences — as is so often the case, some of the best comedy comes from pain.
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