Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird review – Mars Volta bromance looks for time out

<p>Exhaustive documentary tracking the sweet fraternity between Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala goes a little sour</p><p>Love, apparently, is going through a Scientology initiation ceremony. That’s what At the Drive-In and Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López finally agrees to in order to convince singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala to work with him once again – even though it was the latter who asked to reconcile after dissolving the second of these outfits in 2012. Nicolas Jack Davies’s wearing documentary charts this intense friendship and creative collaboration from their early days as afro-haired Puerto Rican dervishes on the largely white 1990s Texan punk scene, through the vicissitudes of their numerous musical outlets.</p><p>“If this ever gets weird” is their day-one promise to each other: that they will dissolve whatever band they are working on if it threatens their relationship. It has definitely got weird by the time a frazzled Bixler-Zavala jealously criticises his running buddy’s side projects on social media. And then later, suspecting Rodríguez-López of being a “suppressive person” (to use the lingo of the Church), he forces him to get his thetans checked. At this point, the pair have already weathered two cycles of exhilaration and disillusionment with their two main groups – as well as the fatal overdose of Mars Volta creative galvaniser Jeremy Ward.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/06/omar-and-cedric-if-this-ever-gets-weird-review-mars-volta-bromance-looks-for-time-out">Continue reading...</a>