SD. Just last October the name “ThatsDominican” may not have brought about images of a talking Mosquito infatuated with Merengue artist Omega, or pictures of a grown man who carries around a wrestling championship belt for no reason.  However, fast-forward 2 million views later (half of those directly from a fan base located in the Dominican Republic), over 100,000 Facebook fans, and you just might want to familiarize yourself with these characters that are often portrayed in the comedy videos of this group of young men.

Manuel Pimentel or “Minus P” as he is known is the mastermind behind these videos.  Alongside a cast of comedian/actors composed of Tommy Peña (Tommy 5000), Jonathan Pagan and Miguel Chandon Sanchez, they have brought forth a new brew of comedy to the video market with YouTube as their vehicle. 

Their site ThatsDominican.Com was started in January 2011 while Manuel was researching some of his childhood heroes in the Dominican Republic.  He figured he would put all that information into one place in case anyone else was interested, and the platform for a future star was born.

The Videos did not come until much later, October to be exact with the titled “El Ser Dominicano” (What it is to be Dominican).  At that time Manuel was doing the videos alone, when he saw the response to his work he said he “never questioned it or looked back since.” Tommy Peña (Who had already been doing videos with Miguel and Jonathan as “The Sitcom TV”), was later introduced to Manuel through a mutual friend and the quartet joined forces in the video recorded that December entitled “Si Jesus Fuera Dominicano” (If Jesus were Dominican), and have remained a group ever since.

“Everything has happened so quickly, and so many opportunities are coming to light that we are just trying to keep a level head so we don’t make any mistakes or choices that will impact our growth in a negative way in the future”, says Manuel.  “Some of our videos have already been shown on television and we got our first live show coming up”, he continues, “We are also beginning a tour shortly after that performance, but we know what’s gotten us here, the videos and because of that we need to keep focused on creating good material for those fans who met us that way”.

As far as future goals, Manuel and the boys plan to continue expanding their brand of comedy to include all of the Latin market, and to move it on a wider scale to the big screen. 

“We call it ‘Dominican comedy’ but in reality the videos can be enjoyed by anyone that speaks Spanish, anyone can relate to the situations or at least laugh about them.  We’re in a good place because a great deal of our fan base comes from the internet and are usually younger, that market loves to share the things that make them smile.  We would love to keep expanding as we have been and capture the moviegoer and TV audience as well”.

If you speak Spanish, or even vaguely understand it do yourself a favor and check out all the videos of these young men in their official site ThatsDominican.Com (http://www.thatsdominican.com/comedia-dominicana), or just type in ThatsDominican on YouTube to see their body of work. You might as well give in now; as their fan base keeps growing I don’t see these guys disappearing anytime soon.

VIDEO LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYMTGre9BoQ