LA BAMBA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Biography of Ritchie Valens and his
macho bad-news brother. It probably takes liberties with the
truth but it is still worth seeing.
"Meteoric" is the word for the career of Ritchie Valens, who signed a recording contract, became successful, had three top-ten singles, and died, all in a span of eight months. He died in a plane crash at age 17, having only months before been a Mexican-American farmworker named Ricardo Valenzuela. LA BAMBA is the story of that last year of his life.
Biographical films about singers give a brutally realistic picture of their subjects' worlds, present a fawning tribute, or lie somewhere in between. LA BAMBA does a little of both. Valens is a pure-hearted good guy with a vision of what kind of music he wants to create, a white knight of Rock and Roll. Contrasting with him is his brother Bob (played by Esai Morales), who played the bully villain of BAD BOYS). BOB IS A SELF-CENTERED FAILURE. HE DEALS DRUGS, DRINKS TOO MUCH, MISTREATS THE WOMAN HE STOLE FROM RITCHIE, AND GENERALLY TURNS HIS OWN FRUSTRATIONS INTO PAIN AND TROUBLE FOR THOSE AROUND HIM. HIS BASENESS SOMEHOW IS A LITTLE EASIER TO BELIEVE THAN RITCHIE'S LOFTINESS, BUT TOGETHER THEY JUST ABOUT MAKE ONE WHOLE PERSON. IN FACT, BOB IS THE MORE INTERESTING OF THE TWO CHARACTERS. RITCHIE'S STORY IS OF THE IDEALIST WHO MAKES GOOD, A SORT OF LATTER-DAY HORATIO ALGER STORY. BUT THROUGH BOB'S CHARACTER WE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT MEXICAN-AMERICAN FARMWORKERS AND THEIR COMMUNITY, WHICH IS MUCH MORE VALUABLE THAN JUST ANOTHER STORY OF A SINGER'S SUCCESS.
WHERE LA BAMBA's story is the most questionable is in its little brushes with the occult. We are told that Ritchie had repeated nightmares and premonitions about plane crashes. As a result, he has a terrible fear of flying which he must reluctantly push aside to fulfill the demands of stardom. We are also told that he has lost every coin-toss of his life except the one which put him on the flight which killed him. He apparently wins that toss, but the audience knows better. If the premonitions indeed pointed to the way he would die, they should be better documented than just being thrown into a film. If they did not really occur, then the screenwriter should not claim they did in what is otherwise supposed to be a factual story.
But LA BAMBA is good entertainment even if before the film, like me, you couldn't reliably name a single one of Valens's hits. I still got caught up in the excitement of the creation of a new kind of music, even if it is not the kind of music I generally enjoy. Rate it a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
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