Hey Harry, Folks here... You've been getting alot of sleep soon. Me am too. Columns of DVD's doing the Berkeleys around my conciousness. Soon, coherency will bake in a bake-o-lite and be pop-n-fresh. Be nice. Bewear Spoilers...
Hey,
Saw a screening of Spanglish last night at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. It was far from finished with a temp score, and many of the scenes were in dire need of color correction. Aside from that though, the edit was pretty much complete. It’ll be interesting to see what changes they do make, because in my opinion, some are needed.
All in all, it’s a funny and touching, and at moments, heart wrenching film. I’m a big fan of James Brooks’ other movies, namely As Good As It Gets. I don’t think it quite reaches that same peak, but that’s not to say the film isn’t a success by any means.
The plot’s pretty straight forward. A Mexican mother and daughter, Flor (the mother) and Cristina (the daughter), leave Mexico via border jumping to go live with her cousin in LA. Everything there is great for the next few years, while the Flor works two jobs, never leaving a small Mexican community. When Cristina gets old enough to get interested in guys, though, Flor wants to keep an eye on her daughter and so she quits her jobs to work only one as a house keeper for Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni.
Tea’s the villain of the film, for lack of a better word. Her performance is terrific, and she manages to create one of those characters that you absolutely hate, but at the same time feel completely sorry for her.
Adam’s performance is kind of a subdued version of his normal shtick, but he’s not really given a whole lot to work with. He plays a chef who owns a restaurant, and falls in love with Flor.
The rest of the family is rounded out by Cloris Leachman. She play’s Tea’s mom and she steals every single scene she’s in as the often drunk, always loveable, and sometimes wise live in grandma to Adam and Tea’s two kids. The kids are Bernice and Georgie. Bernice is the epitome of cute, and her chemistry with Adam Sandler is top notch. The son, Georgie, was totally and utterly useless as a character. He’s in like two scenes, total, to which he contributes nothing. The rest of the time, you’re wondering, “where the hell is their son?” Makes me wonder if they didn’t cut out a ton of his scenes. Also makes me wonder if there’s a way they can edit him out completely, because he certainly doesn’t add anything to the film.
The big “romantic” crux of the story is this notion that Adam Sandler falls in love with Flor after Flor and Cristina move in with them for the summer at their beach house Malibu. In turn, Flor falls in love with him. And to make the audience more accepting of that, Tea’s character is played out like a total bitch. Not only to her husband, but also to her daughter as she pretty much tries to take Flor’s daughter as her own, because she finds her far more beautiful than her own, heavier set daughter. The big problem is that the romance between Sandler and Flor is never earned. There’s really not any reason that the two would be attracted to each other, aside from the fact that they kind of see eye to eye on certain things. The best example of that is a hilarious scene in which Cristina is forced to translate an argument back and forth between Sandler and Flor. And while it’s extremely amusing, they just never seem to click.
The story pretty much comes to a head when Tea finally realizes what she’s doing and calls off her affair and then breaks down and tells all to Sandler. He then drives off with Flor to his restaurant where the two may or may not have had sex. They kind of leave it open, but it’s awkward scene, especially given that there really hasn’t been enough to suggest that they should be getting together. But they both declare their love for each other and then leave.
The next day, Flor quits and, much to the regret of her daughter, decides that Cristina is no longer allowed to see any of them again, and pulls her out of the school that Tea managed to get her a scholarship for. Flor and Adam say goodbye, and so does Cristina. And as Flor and Cristina leave, you can tell that he’s sad and bummed out, but for the love of his daughter, he decides to stick with Tea and make it work. Well, I shouldn’t say that’s how it turns out, but that’s certainly what’s implied.
Flor and Cristina hop on a bus back to her cousin’s house and that’s how it ends. The entire thing is narrated by the 17 year old Cristina as though it’s an admissions essay to Princeton (I think, it might have been yale or havard or some other nice school). The narration throughout was pretty bad, and I think most of the audience felt the same way. Hopefully they’ll not only re-record it, but rewrite it as well.
Of the people there, they took a polling at the end, and it seemed like about 80 percent or so of the people there gave it the highest mark possible of excellent.
I don’t know if I can quite go that far, but it was a rather enjoyable film. Like I said, it’s not As Good As It Gets, but it’s still a pretty damned enjoyable film. The biggest problem it has is that the romance it goes for seems forced, and while there is a lot of time between now and December, I don’t think that editing is gonna fix the lack of chemistry between Flor and Adam Sandler, or the script failures in this particular aspect of it.
That said, I wouldn’t be too surprised if I see Tea or Cloris’ name on the ballot come Oscar time.
-Donnie Brasco
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