Y Tu Mama Tambien.

* Written by Carlos Cuaron * Directed by Alfonso Cuaron * Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Maribel Verdu * IFC Films

Who can resist a good pig comedy? Give me Babe, State Fair (the Dana Andrews version, sigh), and an overstuffed bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, and I'm putty in anyone's hands.

Y Tu Mama Tambien (And Your Mother Too), a buoyantly funny cascade of teen male hormones from Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, had me long before a pack of 23 pigs launched a coup d'etat on a beachfront campsite. The porkers are capable, to be sure. They squeal. They frolic. They wreak general havoc. But the pigs that steal the film are far more provocative. They drop ecstasy. They chug tequila. They perform synchronized masturbation from the ends of diving boards.

Julio and Tenoch, two coddled teenagers from Mexico City, are pigs for love. When they're not mauling their girlfriends in bedroom trysts, they're sharing details with their buddies, who are so set on their hedonistic pursuits that they've codified them into a group manifesto. "Whacking off rules!" is number 7. "Don't sleep with your friend's girlfriend" is number 5, I think. They have trouble with that one.

As played with endearingly manic energy by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, Julio and Tenoch are a hyped-up Bill and Ted who appear to be a lot more in touch with their world than their pharmaceutical regimen might promise. But the limitations of their awareness become palpable as they embark on a car odyssey to a seaside Eden with an unlikely Eve in tow.

Their travel mate is a sensual older dental technician named Luisa (an enticing Maribel Verdu), a fun-loving Spaniard who sees in the boys a handy escape from her unfaithful husband. As the three make their way to this paradise that may or may not exist, they smoke grass and share clinical thoughts about drugs, sex, and fidelity. They also engage in sex, commandeered by Luisa, who helps the boys unravel the morass of homosexual tensions between them.

An acquaintance, previewing this film in one of its festival showcases, wrote it off as "just another obnoxious sexed-up teen comedy, with subtitles." I think we saw different movies. With a lavishly textured screenplay by the director's brother, Carlos Cuaron, Y Tu Mama Tambien limns its teen universe with a 360-degree alertness to humanity and an appreciation for the porous nature of sexuality that the American Pie bakers of Hollywood couldn't conjure in their dreams.

The brothers Cuaron catch peripheral glimpses of Julio and Tenoch's world that the boys are either too stoned or too spoiled to take in: peasants being harassed by police at the roadsides, the president's chauffeurs scarfing snacks in parking lots, elderly cafe workers shimmying in a hot kitchen. An omniscient narrator relates bulletins about the past and future of virtually everyone who crosses the screen, including the sundry fates of those 23 marauding pigs. They're not pretty. Nor, after the hilarity ebbs, are the excellent adventures of Julio and Tenoch.

Stuart is film critic and senior film writer at Newsday.