Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Search cinema listings

Browse cinemas A-Z

Search 20,000 reviews

 

Spanglish (2004)

Director: James L Brooks

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Flor (Paz Vega) is a single mother, a Mexican who has lived in LA for years with a knowledge of English as minimal as her contact with English-speaking Angelenos. This changes slightly when a pal recommends her for a job cleaning the house of neurotic designer Deborah Clasky (Téa Leoni) and her successful chef husband John (Adam Sandler). The wealthy, welcoming couple are, it’s soon clear, having problems of their own – which, apart from the pleasures and pitfalls of parenthood, is about all they have in common with their pretty, proud and fiercely private employee…
A smile, a tear, a smile… Ever since ‘Terms of Endearment’ and ‘Taxi’, James L Brooks has specialised in ‘quality’ comedy-drama – smartly written, superior sitcom stuff that aims to treat, in an adult, intelligent, sensitive way, serious issues. Here he touches on economic disparity, class divisions, social integration, parenting, marital conflict, communication skills, culinary fame and so forth, all in a characteristically well-meaning but inadequate way. My colleague Jessica Winter has rightly written elsewhere of Brooks’ regrettable tendency to portray his women as problematically volatile – Deborah, especially, is quite monstrous – but actually Sandler’s all-round nice guy is equally implausible in many respects. It’s less a matter of poor casting than of performers made to act up between the admittedly nifty one-liners; this is Hollywood liberal humanism as muted join-the-dots melodrama, all carefully calculated colouring, broad outlines, and no room for fruitful digression. Other examples of Brooks’ TV mindset: drab direction, gently probing but painless ethical inquiry, and a reassuring insistence that life and people (viewers included, naturally) are good.

Author: GA

Time Out London Issue 1801: February 23-March 2 2005


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: James L Brooks

Producer: James L Brooks, Richard Sakai, Julie Ansell

Cast: Adam Sandler, Téa Leoni, Paz Vega, Cloris Leachman, Aimee Garcia full cast

Rated: 12A

Duration: 130 mins

UK Release: Feb 25 2005

Related articles






Top Stories

Mickey Rourke: a life in film

Mickey Rourke: a life in film

To celebrate the release of 'The Wrestler', Time Out takes a look at the highs, lows and many middles of the career of Mickey Rourke

'Milk': preview

'Milk': preview

Paul Burston, Time Out’s Gay editor, revisits milestones in gay cinema and new flick ‘Milk’, an ‘extraordinary, Oscar-worthy’ biopic of gay US politician Harvey Milk

The softer side of Sam Peckinpah

The softer side of Sam Peckinpah

Ahead of a retrospective of his films at BFI Southbank, Time Out look at the softer side of Sam Peckinpah

Best films of 2008

Best films of 2008

Time Out’s film critics remember 2008’s silver screen highs, lows and welcome reissues

Sir David Hare: interview

Sir David Hare: interview

Wally Hammond meets Sir David Hare to talk about his latest screen adaptation, which tackles Bernhard Schlink’s post-Holocaust romance ‘The Reader’

Spring film preview 2009

Spring film preview 2009

Take a peek at what the Time Out Film team are looking forward to in the new year with our spring film preview