Spanglish

One of my more persistent critics recently noted by way of a long-winded missive in the wake of a scathing review I had published previously that the apparent reason I dislike so many films and movies nowadays is because my expectations of them overall are too high.

After all, this critic wrote as a defense of cinema, they are just entertainment.

Superficially, yes. Films and movies overall are just entertainment.

But at a certain point, after I have paid the price of admission, after I have stepped into the half-shadows and gathering darkness, after I found a seat and made myself comfortable, there comes a point when expectations are not only allowed but required, if one is to be honest when it comes to their entertainment needs and wants, that is.

At this particular point a given film or movie should be more than just entertainment. It should engage and perhaps enrage. It should enlighten, maybe frighten. It should give me something more than just a good way to waste a few hours every week or so.

Of course such demands beg a question: Are there any films or movies currently that meet these criteria?

Actually, yes. One or two. And they tend to be, I notice, films and movies that are more than just memorable. They are cinematic efforts that transcend the measure of time itself: A year from now, five years from now, a decade from now they will be those films and movies that remain important to me because they embody something more than just the cookie-cutter/formulaic, tried-and-true, heavy-on-the-cliches mandate that makes up much of the fare offered nowadays under the heading 'cinema'. They are efforts that work hard to get your attention, then catch you off guard with moments you just can't get out of your head.

They are films and movies, then, like "Spanglish".

"Spanglish" tells the story of a Mexican woman and her daughter, who travel to Los Angeles to bring a measure of reason and sanity to a certifiably goofy, insane, and crazy upper middle-class white family. Superficially, this premise is entertaining. But, wait: There's more: The head of this household is played by Adam Sandler who is, as you will hopefully learn first-hand, the sanest of the bunch. Which means the aforementioned Mexican woman and daughter have their work cut out for them.

I know: This sounds like a weak and worn sit-com, and at first it is. But there comes, quickly, characters, lines of dialogue, and moments that make up for all of this. For example, Deborah Clasky, the mother of the L.A. clan, played by Tea Leoni: She is at once hysterical, melodramatic, dramatic, gentle, kind, enlightened, entertaining, educating, manical, maddening, and oh-so politically correct. The reason for this is rather simple: Her life is one crisis after another. That she tends to bring on these crisis is incidential. What is important is what she is from one moment to the next, and how she veers from one personality to another at dizzying speed: She doesn't live her life at the top of her lungs. She lives her life over the top. Again, it could be heavy-handed hamming, otherwise suggested as stand-up comedy but it comes across, thankfully, as something else, owing much to the aforementioned Leoni, who calls forth Gracie Allen, Lucille Ball, and other female comic acting talents in her to-the-moon-and-back-again antics.

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