Bob Trevino Likes It is a heartwarming, feel-good semi-autobiography about healing from your past wounds through others. Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira) has spent her life caring for others with little in return. Despite immense care for both of her parents, her mother leaves her as a kid, and her father, Bob (French Stewart), abruptly does the same in her 20s. Now, she longs for a legit connection with Bob—or anyone—before it’s too late. However, resorting to Facebook messaging to contact him, Lily contacts another Bob Trevino (Luca Leguizamo), one in a construction job who faces long hours to make his wife happy at the cost of self-care. As they both seek out close connections to other people, their accidental correspondence blossoms into a touching friendship, each reminding the other of their true worth as human beings through small, kind acts—something that Bob forgot about and Lily was never given. Together, they laugh, they cry, they heal, and they pry, learning what it means to fully live as self-accepted people.

Family’s tough. Every single one has problems, whether that be internal conflict or unmatchable personalities. Bob Trevino Likes It demonstrates the extreme of that spectrum. Through a witty but vulnerable take by break-out star Barbie Ferreira as Lily, director-writer Tracie Laymon, whose own experience with a stranger-turned-friend partially inspired this story, reels audiences into a so-tragic-it’s-funny journey of abandonment. For example, as Lily faces her father in a diner, he hands her a list of every penny she’s ever cost him, reacting like he’s given her a car. “Dad, is this an itemized list of all the expenses of being my father?” Lily asks, Ferreira squinting her eyes with every mildly sarcastic intonation. Ferreira maintains this level of thick-skinned sarcasm throughout; even at her lowest, she makes audiences laugh. “It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay,” a slightly shaken Lily pleads to her crying therapist after explaining her life story. She needs a void filled, but she copes better than many might—a strength reinforced by Leguizamo’s nurturing but similarly humorous portrayal as the not-father Bob Trevino.

Bob has a similar void that needs filling. While he does not necessarily feel the same abandonment as Lily does, he over-exerts himself to help his eternally grieving wife cope with their miscarriage years earlier. Leguizamo ensures that Bob is a selfless, thoughtful soul who has forgotten what it means to connect to people or care for himself. Not for others, though: “Jeannie [Bob’s wife], I think I may have made a friend. Some young woman on the internet…. Look, she’s screaming into the void, nobody even likes her posts,” Bob explains, shoving his phone in Jeannie’s face with a mildly defensive but mostly soft tone, a half-smile and an unintrusive gaze. This random connection provides the perfect opportunity for Bob to make a new friend other than his wife, giving him his first instance of one of the kindest things anyone can do: care about and for himself. Together, the unrelated Trevinos enter an endearing relationship of laughs and directness that’s usually sought for but never gained by most in the real world—demonstrating what it takes to create and maintain long-lasting relationships of any form with anyone.

Thus, through every broken toilet that needs fixing, lunch that needs eating, and experience that needs hashing out, Bob Trevino Likes It eloquently illustrates how even the most minor acts of kindness go far. The film is not perfect—it’s instantly predictable, has one or two undefined side characters, and a few corny lines or monologues weigh down the otherwise acute emotional toll—but it’s primarily funny and embracing in direction and performance enough to amuse and touch audiences simultaneously. For comedy fans, Ferreira or Leguizamo fans, or those looking for something not action-heavy or dramatic, even those not named Bob Trevino will probably leave the film feeling they Likes It.

Screening @ Coolidge Corner Theater, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, and other select theaters now