Sin cobertura

The Wi-Fi in the Middle Ages is Terrible

I’ve reached a point where watching families ignore each other over dinner in a movie feels less like a comedic trope and more like a documentary. We're all living in the glow of our little rectangles. So when Mar Olid’s *Sin cobertura* (2025) opens with a young girl wishing her family’s screens would simply disappear, I couldn't help but nod along in the dark of the theater. (Who hasn't wanted to hurl a router out a window at least once?) But when a mysterious fortune teller's fog transports this screen-addicted brood straight into the Middle Ages, the movie shifts from domestic satire into a frantic, hit-or-miss historical farce.



Olid, working from a script by Olatz Arroyo, places herself firmly in the current wave of Spanish family comedies—the kind pioneered recently by the *Padre no hay más que uno* films. There's a specific rhythm to these movies. They move fast, relying on broad physical comedy and recognizable character archetypes to keep the youngest viewers distracted. Yet, visually, the movie suffers from the flat, hyper-illuminated look of a television sitcom. You never really believe these characters are trapped in a feudal village during the Reconquista; the mud looks too clean, and the stone walls of the castle seem freshly painted. The craft here is utilitarian. The camera rarely does more than point and shoot at whoever is speaking, which strips the time-travel premise of any real sense of wonder or danger.

One sequence, however, perfectly encapsulates both the charm and the limitations of the movie. Ernesto Sevilla, playing the relentlessly laid-back father Agustín, finds himself essentially giving a masterclass in modern HR management to a deeply confused feudal lord (Luis Callejo). Agustín stands there, arms loosely crossed, employing the exact same passive-aggressive corporate speak you'd hear in a Madrid marketing agency, trying to explain "interpersonal boundaries" to men holding broadswords. It works because Sevilla is essentially playing his standard, deadpan comedic persona. His shoulders droop, his eyes look perennially sleepy, and he delivers absurd anachronisms with a completely straight face.



Alexandra Jiménez carries the heavier load as Julia, the scientist mother trying to rationalize their situation through trial and error. Jiménez has a gift for playing tightly wound women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Watch how she physically stiffens whenever a peasant offers them something deeply unsanitary to eat. Her jaw locks. Her polite, terrified smile never quite reaches her eyes. She anchors the chaos, even when the script doesn't give her much interior life beyond her sudden lack of a 5G connection. The children, including Luna Fulgencio, hit their marks well enough, but they're mostly relegated to reacting to the lack of modern conveniences.

Whether this all amounts to a good movie depends heavily on your tolerance for repeated gags about plumbing and Wi-Fi. The Spanish publication *AccionCine* noted exactly this tension, writing that the movie "isn't capable of escaping that formula and falls into repetition, or into script tangles that lead nowhere." I agree. The second act spins its wheels, relying heavily on comedian cameos (like Joaquín Reyes popping up as King Bermudo II) rather than advancing the emotional arc of a family learning to actually talk to each other.



Still, I walked out of the cinema feeling a mild, unchallenging fondness for what Olid attempted. It isn't sharp satire, nor is it a visual triumph. But underneath the goofy CGI and the anachronistic punchlines, there's a very human exhaustion at play here. *Sin cobertura* is a messy, deeply flawed reflection of our collective desire to just unplug and look our children in the eye—even if it takes the threat of the bubonic plague to make us do it.