Spanglish

Films/DVD Asylum

Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

Film starring Adam Sandler as a chef and restaurant owner, and Tea Leoni as his high maintenance, lunatic wife. Leoni is need of a maid (although she is recently unemployed), and up shows the beautiful Paz Vega (from Sex and Lucia), who is in need of a better paying job so that she does not have to work two jobs. She is hired. She has lived in the barrio for six years, having snuck across the border with her daughter, and speaks no English.
Soon, Leoni has come to rely upon her. Sandler and Leoni have a daughter, who can be said to have the looks only a parent can love. She wears braces, has course hair, and is a little plump. Mom is a fitness nut, and yearns for the day when her daughter will be a chip off the old block. Mom buys daughter size eight dresses, which predictably sends the daughter into a depression. Vega tailers the clothes, unbeknownst to the daughter, so that she can fit in them.
Soon, Leoni is searching for a summer place in Malibu for the family to spend the summer. The problem is that she wants Vega to come along, and the summer place is not on the bus line, so she would have to commute, but she does not drive. So Vega and her daughter move in for the summer. Leoni immediately falls in love with Vega's daughter, I suspect because the daughter is slender and attractive, and is all the things that Leoni's daughter is not, and all the things that Leoni wants.
Friction is created when Leoni starts to take Vega's daughter shopping, and finally, enrolls her in a presigious school. Events come to a head in the last act of the film.
The film's appeal is really about the little details. A scene where Vega's daughter interprets for her mother to Sandler is hysterical in the mannerism used by the daughter to mimic her mother. Sandler's presence in the film is very subdued, and he plays the straight man to Leoni. He is the caring father, and the tolerant husband. He has one scene in which he is drunk, and not a slapstick moment. I enjoyed Sandler in Punch Drunk Love, felt him acceptable in the Wedding Singer, and pretty much disliked him in everything else. This is a performance for the viewer who does not like Sandler because he is very un-Sandler like. In other words, enjoyable.
This is Leoni's film. If you liked her in Flirting with Disaster, you will love her in this. She steals the film by being manic without being annoying or tiring. She has real comic ability, and I wish we saw more of her.
Vega is beautiful, and gives that wholesome beauty that you feel you would not want to kick her out of bed once the deed is done. The film is directed by James L. Brooks, who brought us As Good As It Gets.
I really enjoyed this film, largely because it was funny and unpredictable. With most films, Vega walks in the door, and the sexual tension begins immediately, and the path will lead to a sexual moment. That this did not happen was very refreshing. The ending is logical. Cloris Leachman plays Leoni's mother, and gives us some very good lines. The film received some lukewarm reviews, and I am not sure why. Maybe we have come to critisize those films which simply want to entertain, and put a smile on your face. Maybe, for some, life has become too complicated.

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Michael Percy Audio

Topic - Spanglish - jamesgarvin 07:31:49 05/05/05 (1)

Too looooong in the extreme. I thought it would never end. - EdM 10:37:09 05/09/05 (0)

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