Miss – Adam Sandler, Tea Leoni, Paz Vega, Cloris Leachman

This film lacked a solid plot and cohesive storyline. Spanglish is a “slice of life” film detailing the relationships between a poor immigrant mother, her young daughter and their rich white employers. The entire film is set within the framework of the daughter’s (Shelbie Bruce) college admission essay to Princeton and based on her questionable citizenship status I’m not sure how that is going to end up.

Tea Leoni (as Deborah Clasky) delivers an over the top neurotic characterization of a 100% self involved Brentwood career “woman” who recently lost her job and has decided to be a stay at home mom. In fact her character is so brazenly ignorant to the feelings of those around her that she becomes single dimensional and sucks what little chance this film had of being a realistic snapshot of life into a bottomless void. Weaksauce attempts at cooking up moving dialog and strong relationships fail horribly.

Adam Sandler delivers a palatable performance, but he has to move beyond simply changing the volume of his voice to represent different emotions.

This film offered a single glimmer of hope in the portrayal of Deborah’s alcoholic mother by Cloris Leachman. Paz Vega provides mostly eye candy, but I won’t make a full judgment of her at this time because this film doesn’t exactly give any of the actors an opportunity to refine their craft in a new and meaningful way.

The bottom line is I don’t recommend this one for viewing in theatres or rental, but if it happens to be on while you are stuck in a transatlantic airplane flight then I be strong you will persevere because at least it was better than Raising Helen.

Best Scene: Grandma (Leachman) giving singing lessons to her grandson.

Rated PG-13 for some sexual content and brief language.
Comedy
Running Time: 2 hours 8 minutes

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