James L. Brooks has been giving us such splendid entertainment as a writer, as a producer, as a director for so many years now. I stayed away from SPANGLISH over the Christmas holidays because the reviews were less than mixed, and in a busy season, I made the mistake of thinking it probably wasn't very good. I'm no Adam Sandler fan either. Well I saw SPANGLISH last night and went on this site to read other comments about the film. Lots of you seemed to like the film, and so many of you had questions or thought the film was somehow incomplete:
Why would Flor, the housekeeper for the Clasky's give up here daughter's private school scholarship?
There's no way a gorgeous woman like Flor would be unmarried and working as a housekeeper in Beverly Hills.
Tea Leoni's character is bipolar.
The film tries to tackle too many story lines at once.
The proof of SPANGLISH's excellence is that everybody sees something different, and I think that's where its greatness is. I also think we'll be watching it for years to come with an ever-developing affection and cult-like devotion. I'm assuming you've read the plot line, so I'll just stick to the aspects of this movie which made it such a great experience for me.
Brooks' real talent is in giving us stories about people we care about, even after we've decided we don't like them. Shirley MacLaine's great performance in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, and Jack Nicholson's in AS GOOD AS IT GETS are not nice people, nor are the three leads in BROADCAST NEWS very likable, but they grow on you. In SPANGLISH we enter the lives of a upwardly mobile Los Angeles couple, both driven by their work which makes them nuts, but too busy to get off the treadmill and smell the flowers.
Tea Leoni 's Deborah is a character who is very neurotic, controlling, arrogant, competitive, spoiled, bratty, cold, and all-too-human. Now a full-time house- mommy after being downsized by her company, she's feeling unfulfilled and dazed by being somehow reduced to motherhood. Leoni gives an incredibly brave performance, and you still don't like her in the end. Adam Sandler, putting aside his obnoxious screen schtick for a second, is totally believable as John, the sweetly hen-pecked and cuckolded husband, who is falling for Flor. Scared of his success as a first-rate chef, he's nearly paralyzed when his sous-chef announces he has the backing to leave and open his own place. But as usual, both husband and wife throw money at any situation that seems to threaten them. Cloris Leachman is back to remind us just what a superb character actress she is, and her wise and loving alcoholic grandmother who is indulged and ignored and condescended to by her daughter, ends up with some of the wisest advice she can give her daughter when the crisis of her marriage has to be faced in real terms and without her usual hysterics. Grandma has lots to atone for over her own neglect, and Leachman's character seems brave enough to put down the booze and face the music.
Paz Vega is a gorgeous woman and is radiant as Flor, the housekeeper. She's a wonderfully protective mother, and she gets totally caught up in her employer's dysfunctional family. The device of having her speaking only Spanish in the first half of the movie, and shyly testing her English in the second half really works as she is an expressive actress. I had no trouble reading her thoughts. All the kids are pitch-perfect, especially the young actress who plays the Clasky's daughter, Bernice. Crushed by her mother's never-subtle hints about her weight, there's a heartbreaking scene where her mother gives her shopping bags of new clothing, all of it too small to fit her.
Brooks doesn't offer any tidy answers here. His characters don't emerge "better"--they just are. Flor quits and takes her beloved daughter with her, away from Deborah, who acts like the only reason she helps to arrange a scholarship for her at her daughter's private school and showers her with gifts, is because Flor's child is really the kid she would prefer to have. And away from John because she knows there's no future for her. She's not a home-wrecker, and she wants to preserve her daughter's own identify, not become middle-class and Anglo. Many people would argue she's nuts to deny her daughter, including me. But I see Brooks' point. You know Deborah and John will probably not stay together. She's wound way too tight, and when her daughter goes through puberty, war will be declared in that household.
As much as I liked Sandler's warm and neurotically hen-pecked patriarch, he's way too passive-aggressive in his own house, colluding with his daughter to make up for her mother's insensitivity. Grandma may have put herself on the wagon to save her daughter's marriage, but there are issues between them from their past that need lots of healing. And what of the virtually ignored little brother?
A little messy, and hugely ambitious, SPANGLISH is a lot like life. Brooks is a great auteur, and here he offers no easy answers of solutions. He keeps giving us films with characters with depth that we recognize and care about. His is a great talent in an industry where humor and intelligence are in very short supply. I watched this film with a friend of mine who started to cry halfway through the picture and didn't stop.
SPANGLISH is going into my permanent DVD collection.
Why would Flor, the housekeeper for the Clasky's give up here daughter's private school scholarship?
There's no way a gorgeous woman like Flor would be unmarried and working as a housekeeper in Beverly Hills.
Tea Leoni's character is bipolar.
The film tries to tackle too many story lines at once.
The proof of SPANGLISH's excellence is that everybody sees something different, and I think that's where its greatness is. I also think we'll be watching it for years to come with an ever-developing affection and cult-like devotion. I'm assuming you've read the plot line, so I'll just stick to the aspects of this movie which made it such a great experience for me.
Brooks' real talent is in giving us stories about people we care about, even after we've decided we don't like them. Shirley MacLaine's great performance in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, and Jack Nicholson's in AS GOOD AS IT GETS are not nice people, nor are the three leads in BROADCAST NEWS very likable, but they grow on you. In SPANGLISH we enter the lives of a upwardly mobile Los Angeles couple, both driven by their work which makes them nuts, but too busy to get off the treadmill and smell the flowers.
Tea Leoni 's Deborah is a character who is very neurotic, controlling, arrogant, competitive, spoiled, bratty, cold, and all-too-human. Now a full-time house- mommy after being downsized by her company, she's feeling unfulfilled and dazed by being somehow reduced to motherhood. Leoni gives an incredibly brave performance, and you still don't like her in the end. Adam Sandler, putting aside his obnoxious screen schtick for a second, is totally believable as John, the sweetly hen-pecked and cuckolded husband, who is falling for Flor. Scared of his success as a first-rate chef, he's nearly paralyzed when his sous-chef announces he has the backing to leave and open his own place. But as usual, both husband and wife throw money at any situation that seems to threaten them. Cloris Leachman is back to remind us just what a superb character actress she is, and her wise and loving alcoholic grandmother who is indulged and ignored and condescended to by her daughter, ends up with some of the wisest advice she can give her daughter when the crisis of her marriage has to be faced in real terms and without her usual hysterics. Grandma has lots to atone for over her own neglect, and Leachman's character seems brave enough to put down the booze and face the music.
Paz Vega is a gorgeous woman and is radiant as Flor, the housekeeper. She's a wonderfully protective mother, and she gets totally caught up in her employer's dysfunctional family. The device of having her speaking only Spanish in the first half of the movie, and shyly testing her English in the second half really works as she is an expressive actress. I had no trouble reading her thoughts. All the kids are pitch-perfect, especially the young actress who plays the Clasky's daughter, Bernice. Crushed by her mother's never-subtle hints about her weight, there's a heartbreaking scene where her mother gives her shopping bags of new clothing, all of it too small to fit her.
Brooks doesn't offer any tidy answers here. His characters don't emerge "better"--they just are. Flor quits and takes her beloved daughter with her, away from Deborah, who acts like the only reason she helps to arrange a scholarship for her at her daughter's private school and showers her with gifts, is because Flor's child is really the kid she would prefer to have. And away from John because she knows there's no future for her. She's not a home-wrecker, and she wants to preserve her daughter's own identify, not become middle-class and Anglo. Many people would argue she's nuts to deny her daughter, including me. But I see Brooks' point. You know Deborah and John will probably not stay together. She's wound way too tight, and when her daughter goes through puberty, war will be declared in that household.
As much as I liked Sandler's warm and neurotically hen-pecked patriarch, he's way too passive-aggressive in his own house, colluding with his daughter to make up for her mother's insensitivity. Grandma may have put herself on the wagon to save her daughter's marriage, but there are issues between them from their past that need lots of healing. And what of the virtually ignored little brother?
A little messy, and hugely ambitious, SPANGLISH is a lot like life. Brooks is a great auteur, and here he offers no easy answers of solutions. He keeps giving us films with characters with depth that we recognize and care about. His is a great talent in an industry where humor and intelligence are in very short supply. I watched this film with a friend of mine who started to cry halfway through the picture and didn't stop.
SPANGLISH is going into my permanent DVD collection.