Spanglish

James L. Brooks (writer/director of "As Good as it Gets") brings us "Spanglish," which is yet another one of his movies that can now be added to the "movies with very interesting characters"-list (which Brooks started I believe). In "Spanglish," Tea Leoni, Adam Sandler, and Paz Vega (who is wonderfully luminous!) star in the melting pot Los Angeles vignette about cultural differences, language barrieres, and trying to raise a family amidst it all.

The story is told through the eyes of Flor's (Paz Vega) daughter in an attempt to inform and enlighten the audience of just how wonderful her mother really is. Like all James L. Brooks' films, the characters half resemble real people you and I and everyone else know AND half resemble people that could only exist in a Brooks' film. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I say this to clarify how wonderfully complex the art of screenwriting is....you can't just put a conversation between two people on screen; it has to be tweaked to some degree.

Initially, "Spanglish" intrigued me and I found myself inside of the film within minutes. The first act is beautifully constructed and throws the audience into a family of very different people at one particular stage in their life. By doing this, Brooks' wants us to feel that we know these people...and so, very little introduction to characters is given. I loved this about the movie's opening premise! However, having said that, the movie has its fair share of "hit" and "miss" scenes. The scene where Flor and her daughter attempt to communicate to Adam Sandler's character frustration and fury is one of the funniest and most perfectly "timed" scenes to come out in American cinema this year. Both Paz Vega (and the child actor...whatever her name is) nail every moment here and it could not be improved. However, there's also scenes where this perfection is obviously lacking and so, the audience feels a bit of disconnectedness in these scenes. And the end, although like Brooks' other films, tends to be twisting the story's theme into something the film doesn't really communicate as much as it probably should have. That is to say, it ends with a "what i learned from all this is..." kind of sum up, which (in my opinion) takes away from the ambiguity of the "slice of life" movie-feeling the picture seemed to be going for. And that's exactly what the movie is: it's not this plot trying to be worked out, but rather a snapshot into the lives of many people. I wish the story would've gone different ways at different times, but it didn't and so I have to accept that fact I guess.

Overall, I liked the movie though. It's one that gets better once you leave the theater, as the feelings of "what is going on here?" slowly drift out of your mind. I suppose though (at many points in the film) that was the director's point: to make you feel like you were trying to make sense of something...and the language was standing between your understanding and the other person's heart. I love that analogy...but I don't think that was always the director's intention. Sandler is great, Leoni is good and the rest of the cast simply...rocks. All in all though, "Spanglish" is a bittersweet, half-ass delight!