SPANGLISH (2004) **1/2 I'm not sure what I think of the title, but I like the film. It's a film about identity crises, undergoing its own identity crisis. Whilst this might prove fertile ground for a particularly pretentious sort of reviewer ( mea culpa , but only sometimes), it doesn't translate into a fluent film. The first.most of the film is a relatively light look at the contradictions and pressures of living in L.A. Nicely done, with a great deal of soul and insight, but nothing you'll remember next week and not deep like Grand Canyon . Then, suddenly but not without warning in the form of broad-brush foreshadowing, it decides to be a flick for the ages: all full of turmoil and disaster and despair and betrayal. The heavier bit doesn't come off so good. I have to say that they had the actors, if that was what they'd wanted to do from the start, and had the high-octane ammo of a script (which they show precious little sign of even imagining that they had). Paz Vega spends much of the film just being brilliant, uttering inherently eloquent confusion and understanding through upturned mouth or eyebrows. It's actually disappointing when she leans to speak English, and starts clogging the magic with the symbols of words. It's not that she can't articulate, she does, it's just that she'd already been doing so well. You just want to cast her as the lead in a surrealist film about the thrown and existential victim reacting in ways beyond imaginable to situations that begin beyond our understanding and only get more confusing from there. She's not perfect in every scene, but she is in enough that you blame the director for the ones that fall short. Téa Leoni brings just the right spirit and feel, and look, to make the role of rich, white, entirely self-absorbed without a clue that's the case, culture victim a sympathetic one. Except for when she's affecting everyone else. And I have to say that Adam Sandler is very good, and entirely credible, as the cool guy grown up successful, plate full of what everybody wants and wondering how much of it he has to stay stuck with. Right on that pin tip where you don't want anything to change-mainly-but know it will, no matter what.
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