MY FAMILY/MI FAMILIA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This is the story of three
generations of a Mexican-American family from the
writer-director of EL NORTE. Disappointingly too
much of the plot is short subplot stories that have
been told before. While there are undeniably some
moving scenes, the end result is not the compelling
film it should have been. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4)
Several films made for PBS's American Playhouse have been quality motion pictures and beat most theatrical fare by a wide margin. Eventually American Playhouse started giving theatrical release to some of their productions before having them appear on television. One of their earlier and definitely one of their better productions was EL NORTE. It was the story of a brother and sister who flee Guatemala and its politics and illegally enter the United States. That film was written and directed by Gregory Nava. With many of the same resonances Nava has co-written and directed MY FAMILY. Unfortunately, while this film, also made in part for American Playhouse, is by no means a bad or even a mediocre film, it fails to show the strength of EL NORTE. MY FAMILY is the story of three generations of the Mexican-American Sanchez family told as a mosaic of individual stories. The real problem is that most of the individual stories are well-worn and familiar. The film tells how as a boy Jose Sanchez walked from his home in Mexico to Los Angeles when the border was just a line drawn in the sand. Taking a gardening job at a wealthy home, he meets and marries Maria (Jenny Gago). He believes himself to be safe and secure in the United States, but the hand of United States Immigration reaches out and separates his family. The bitterness of this injustice and the rage it causes reaches out and destroys two of the Sanchez sons. The two boys are Chucho (played by Esai Morales) and Jimmy (played by Jimmy Smits). Almost a generation apart, young Jimmy idolizes Chucho. Chucho becomes a likable and relatively benign Pachuco gang member, just slightly on the shady side of the law. He is severely punished for legal offenses for which a richer man would have received a much less harsh treatment. Young Jimmy sees what happens to his beloved older brother and grows to have an immense pent-up rage from the injustices done to his family. He is a rebel without any real cause until time gives him something he wants to fight for.
What is right with this film is that it is a moving look at a community under-represented in film. What is wrong is that the writing is several notches below EL NORTE. Too often the film tries to be whimsical when a more serious approach would have been more effective. Nava undercuts the realism of the drama scenes that are just a bit funnier than they should have been, occasionally even unkindly turning characters into caricatures. And even the light dusting of the supernatural does not help the credibility either. And it seems to me that when an old couple look at each other and sum up saying "It's been a good life," it has to be because either they expect their lives or the film to end in the next few minutes.
Jimmy Smits has never been my favorite actor, but this is certainly the closest he has ever come to being a powerful actor in a serious dramatic role. Esai Morales and Eduardo Lopez Rojas, the latter as the adult Jose, coast through their roles without having to show much emotional range. Jenny Gago, on the other hand, carries much more of the film than her low fourth-billing status would indicate. Edward James Olmos and Mary Steenburgen have small parts. The latter seems to be present only to provide one of the film's two sympathetic Anglos.
I cannot say that there were not moments when MY FAMILY brought a tear to my eye, so Nava must have been doing something right. But as epics about ethnic families go, other films have given us fresher and more compelling material. I give this a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews