Brooks’ Spanglish is a language everyone can understand.
Spanglish (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:157
Fresh:82
Rotten:75
Average Rating:5.9/10
Consensus: Vega shines, but the heartwarming elements feel phony, as though they belonged in a sitcom, and there is a mean streak underneath it all.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] some sexual content and brief language
Runtime: 2 hrs 11 mins
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Dec 17, 2004 Wide
Box Office: $42,044,321
Synopsis: With SPANGLISH, writer/director/producer James L. Brooks (AS GOOD AS IT GETS) unfurls yet another accomplished, tender, romantic comedy. Celebrated chef John Clasky (Adam Sandler) is the patriarch... With SPANGLISH, writer/director/producer James L. Brooks (AS GOOD AS IT GETS) unfurls yet another accomplished, tender, romantic comedy. Celebrated chef John Clasky (Adam Sandler) is the patriarch of the Clasky household, but the mood swings of his hypersensitive wife, Deborah (Tea Leoni), are what really runs the show. When the Claskys hire the beautiful Flor (Paz Vega) to be their maid, their already rocky relationship faces some even bigger boulders. Spanish-speaking Flor is a sincere, loving single mother whose daughter, Christina (Shelbie Bruce), receives lavish displays of affection from Deborah. Meanwhile, Deborah neglects her own son and daughter in much the same way that her self-absorbed, alcoholic mother, Evelyn (Cloris Leachman), neglected her. Eventually Deborah crosses a line when she betrays her husband with the real estate broker who is helping her search for a beach house. Faced with this challenge, John and Flor, who share a clear attraction to one another, get the chance to explore their feelings. Brooks populates his film with wholly believable characters. On first glance they may seem like broad caricatures (especially in the case of the roles played by Leoni and Leachman), but the characters subvert viewers' expectations by turning into full-fledged, three-dimensional humans by the end of the film. As in PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, Sandler delivers a performance that shows his wide range of talent. [More]
Starring: Adam Sandler, Paz Vega, Tea Leoni, Cloris Leachman
Starring: Adam Sandler, Paz Vega, Tea Leoni, Cloris Leachman
Director: James L. Brooks
Director: James L. Brooks
Screenwriter: James L. Brooks
Producer: Richard Sakai, Joan Bradshaw, Julie Ansell, James L. Brooks
Composer: Hans Zimmer
Studio: Sony Pictures Entertainment
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Reviews for Spanglish
What remains of Spanglish is another typical Brooks creation: a film of enormous wealth and beauty that just needs another fine tune to make it appear effortless.
The movie is clever, funny and touching but so broadly conceived that it's a bit cartoonish.
It ignores the cultural complexities implied by the title in favor of domestic ones.
Deserves an audience because much of Brooks' writing is still strong and fresh.
It gives us ideas to chew on, moments to laugh at and performances to admire, but, like so many current lives, it is also somewhat in disarray, not always equal to its admirable intentions and the grace of its most successful aspects.
This is the rare movie with characters whose missteps you can accept, and whose integrity you can admire.
What I just hate is the way Spanglish slips into phony tricks and easy laughs whenever the going gets tough, which is to say whenever the story focuses on Leoni's character.
It's another movie about a dysfunctional family, but this one is different because they're original, lovable, forgivable and fascinating.
[Brooks] opts for soothing fakery and empty multicultural rhetoric to send us home feeling good about ourselves and partaking of the surplus smugness that he clearly has to spare.
Spanglish's central players are like real people touched with the perfect dose of comic exaggeration.
This is a deeply unpleasant movie masquerading as a heartfelt social commentary on life in these United States (or at least in the wealthy republic of Beverly Hills).
Brooks plops moms and dads and kids in the middle of a muddled message movie, losing his characters, his wit and, worst of all, his point.
A desperate, shapeless, overreaching big-screen sitcom of a movie that just wants to be loved.
Its view of life is so utterly out of touch with reality (why do we hardly ever see the maid doing any work, for example?) that it's ultimately more exasperating than rewarding.
As a TV sitcom veteran, Brooks knows how to fashion a button-pushing formula. But the buttons on this board are too numerous and their prodding more conspicuously annoying.
You could show it to terrorists to incite their hatred of America, that's how stupidly misguided it is.
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November 09, 2006:
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June 22, 2006:
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June 24, 2005:
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