Eva Longoria is giving 'Lucille Ball energy' in sneak peek at Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip

For director Marvin Lemus, taking on Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip (out March 2025), a loose adaptation of the beloved children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, was an act of love. As a big fan of the original beloved children's book, he was drawn to the story, but it wasn't just the comedy that grabbed his attention. There was something a bit deeper that connected to him personally.

"I loved the book growing up," Lemus tells Entertainment Weekly over a Zoom call. "I loved it so much as a kid because it was one of the only books that I can remember that wasn't so happy-go-lucky. Everything in books for kids is so hunky dory, and I had a dark cloud over my head plenty, and that was the only book that made it okay, that made it seem normal. Yeah, you have bad days. It happens. And this story and script really kept the spirit of that alive, of just kind of being okay with having bad days and how family can be at the part of that."

In the new adaptation, Alexander Garcia (Thom Nemer) has to go on a road trip to Mexico with family after his travel-writer mom, Val Garcia (Eva Longoria), is given a luxury RV for the purposes of the trip. But Alexander believes he has the worst luck in the world, and once he discovers a sacred idol that has been in his family's attic, he is convinced that it is not only the cause of his bad luck but that his family is cursed. Lemus adds, "(Alexander) is trying to figure out how to break this curse and how to get rid of this thing so that they can escape all the chaos that's going to hit them during this road trip. But of course, it doesn't, and hilarity ensues." 

"But at the heart of it, for me," Lemus continues, "it's about this little boy that thinks that there's something wrong with him, that he's cursed because of who his family is and where they come from, and he learns, after going through the journey of the film, that it's really not a curse. It's a superpower, which is something that's just near and dear to my heart as a little brown boy growing up in this country."

For Longoria, working on the film was a no-brainer once Lemus was attached to direct. Having just directed Flamin' Hot, written by Linda Yvette Chavez, Lemus' co-creator on Netflix's Gentefied, which also starred Jesse Garcia, who plays her husband in Alexander, it was just like a big family reunion. "It just felt like family, like a carne asada," she says, laughing. "It felt so easy. And Marvin's funny is my kind of funny. Sometimes you don't have the same kind of funny as your director, but we laugh at the same things, and we get the same jokes. It was one of the best sets to be a part of."

She continues. "It was like we weren't working. We had some crazy sh-- to do. We were in a Winnebago underwater, and then I was hanging off a wire, and the truck was exploding. I think I pulled a muscle running after an ice cream truck. We definitely had hard days, but then it never felt like that. It never felt like a hard day."

Read on for a scene breakdown of the very first Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad accident Alexander encounters on the road trip.

The "Techno Glitch" sequence

Alexander spills a soda

MARVIN LEMUS: This is the beginning of the road trip and the first real moment of cursed bad luck for Alexander. I wanted to keep everybody separate in their own worlds and just to show everybody kind of doing their own thing. I was raised by a single mom, so I was like, "I'm going to put Eva, who plays Alexander's mom, driving this thing. It'll be fun." And Jesse, who's the dad, is making a smoothie in the kitchen. Meanwhile, his sister is in the back reading a book, and in the very back, grandma is just taking a nap while watching Caso Cerrado.

Alexander is just trying to figure out when they're going to finally get to the rest stop when he spills a soda, and he's trying to figure out whether these are good sparks or not. Of course, he has to reset something. There's a big master control computer in the back of this very fancy, luxury, state-of-the-art RV, and he's trying to fix it without telling Mom and Dad. But by fixing it, he is making everything worse.

Mom's driving but can't see out the window

EVA LONGORIA: That's me driving. So what happens is Alexander short circuits the thing and the windshield, and the blinds, and well, everything is going crazy, and I can't see out the window. So I have to put my head out the window, and the RV is so big that I end up having to use my foot to steer. And Jesse is screaming, my daughter is screaming, my son is trying to fix it, and I'm by myself going crazy. The sequence was crazy!

ML: The whole sequence took us like two to three days and this part of it was about a day of playing with the windshield wipers and these blinds. RVs have these blinds to block out the sun so you can sleep inside. And so they have these big sun-blocking blinds that are covering the windshield while she's driving. This was so much fun! Eva doing all her physical comedy is out of control. While we were shooting this, she was just doing all sorts of things. It wasn't in the script that she was going to drive with her foot. She just started doing that while she was sticking her head out the window, trying to make it all work, and she just crushed it. I remember while watching her, I was like, "Man, she's giving us Lucille Ball energy this whole day." It was the best.

Almost colliding

ML: This is near the end of the sequence. Eva's having to drive with her head out the window, which is not good news for anybody, and it leads to a near collision. This happens while Alex is in the back trying to fix all of this. Jesse's in the front, making a smoothie when the blender goes off in his face while he's trying to get it to work, which causes him to fall over. Nobody knows what's going on other than Alexander and his sister, who are trying to fix it together. The adults are all just dealing with what they think are basically ghosts in the freaking thing.

Near the end of the sequence, Jesse's finally getting up and realizes the blinds have gone up, and they can see that they're about to hit a truck, which is a lot of fun. Essentially, this movie, and the reason why I took it, is I read this, and I was like, "This is an action movie." Yes, it's a family comedy, but also basically an action movie with all of these crazy set pieces. I just really wanted to be there to be a part of this Latino family going through this action adventure, trying to survive their day.

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Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip drops March 25, 2025, on Disney+.