Spanglish

I happened to catch Spanglish on HBO last night, which wasn't an altogether lousy movie, just another two hours and 15 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

I felt like something was lacking in it. Maybe it's hard to take Adam Sandler seriously as a father other than in roles such as Big Daddy. Or perhaps the character of his wife is an insufferable cunt without any redeeming qualities besides the fact that she looks OK in a sports bra.

I think my biggest issue with the movie is that the movie and its premise would cease to exist if the housekeeper didn't look like a cross between Selma Hayek and Penelope Cruz and if her daughter were ugly and stupid. I doubt Adam Sandler would be so insistent on teaching the housekeeper how to speak English if she were a 275 pound woman from Honduras with warts who had no desire to learn English and try to make a better life for her daughter. And the daughter is very cute and annoyingly precocious. Would the family try to get the kid into that fancy private school and buy her things if she were ugly and of average intelligence? Doubtfully. They wouldn't even acknowledge the poor kid.

The lady who cleaned my house growing was not very attractive and neither were her children. They were nice enough people and did a competent enough job and my mom gave them old clothes and housewares on occasion but we pretty much left them alone. I would have rather seen Adam Sandler and his wife and mother-in-law and kids do that than get so involved. But I guess that wouldn't make for a very interesting movie, would it?