Balsa Wouldn't

What a waste. Nair's warm wit and affection for her characters permeate every frame. She pulls off some funny running gags: overprotective Angel's mushrooming obsession with his sister's home security, and Dottie's transparent attempts to assemble a "family" out of other detained refugees named Perez in hopes of finding an American sponsor more quickly. And then there's the shot of a kid pinned to a clothesline with laundry, or the old men on Calle Ocho sipping coladas and talking about how much better everything was in Cuba. The Perez Family feels like a love affair between two people who are just wrong for each other; there are lots of good times but you know pretty early on it isn't going to work out.

Nair wastes a lot of screen time on irrelevant subplots. The youngest member of Dottie's newly acquired extended family is a juvenile delinquent who runs afoul of a murderous thug, and Dottie's passion for John Wayne transmutes into a romantic interlude with a studly blond security guard. Gone are the deft character development and eye for fresh, evocative detail Nair showed in Salaam Bombay! Instead we get manufactured flapdoodle like a shot of a prepubescent girl made up like a whore dancing atop a washing machine in a coin laundromat. It's a blatantly artificial scene designed to hit audiences over the head with the inherent sensuality of Cuban culture. Subtlety? Nair directs as if she has never heard of the concept. Dottie's security guard bohunk doesn't just botch their first date, he offers her money for sex at the end of the night.

Sipping cafe cubano outside a bodega and falling in love with some simplistic, over-romanticized view of Cuban culture does not qualify a person to direct a film about the Cuban-American experience, any more than hiring Celia Cruz to play a bit part buys your movie credibility. From Cuba to Scarface to Havana to The Mambo Kings, that appears to be a lesson that filmmakers just don't get. Add The Perez Family to that list.