This makes her more susceptible to the attentions of police officer Palminteri - constantly responding to Huston's overly sensitive burglar alarm. When Cuban strongman Fidel Castro empties his prisons in the Mariel boat lift of 1980, thousands are allowed to flee to the United States.Īmong the one-way travelers are Molina, a sugar cane field proprietor whose wife (Huston) and daughter (Trini Alvarado) have lived without him in Miami for 20 years, and Tomei, a lusty, streetwise personality who wants to go to the land of Elvis, rock 'n' roll and John Wayne.ĭue to the kind of frustrating destiny that only happens in romantic comedies, Huston is led to believe that her husband is not among the Marielitos. But she does so at the cost of the movie: "The Perez Family," which also throws Anjelica Huston, Alfred Molina and Chazz Palminteri into the pot, is an accumulation of clashing flavors in an overambitious stew.Īs with "Mississippi Masala" (in which an Indian family settles in the American South, following Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians from Uganda), Nair launches her story with a political incident. Director Mira Nair, who made "Mississippi Masala," feels such goodwill toward her characters, she goes out of her way to indulge them.
#Alfred molina marisa tomei free
Marisa Tomei's annoyingly over-the-top performance as a curvaceous, earthy free spirit will attest to that alone. "THE PEREZ Family," a slow-burning romantic comedy in which Cuban immigrants resolve their troubled love lives in Miami, is too overcooked for its own good.
#Alfred molina marisa tomei series
As Swicord’s screenplay degenerates into a tedious series of misunderstandings and mistaken identities, Nair’s direction becomes so broadly emphatic that nearly every scene seems to constitute a major climax. “The Perez Family” was directed by Mira Nair, an Indian-born film maker whose previous work (“Salaam Bombay,” “Mississippi Masala”) seemed far more authentic and stylistically controlled. None of the actors has enough screen time to develop them. Robin Swicord’s screenplay, based on a novel by Christine Bell, tries to pack too many characters and too many incidents into a feature film framework (Chazz Palminteri is also on hand as a sympathetic FBI agent). Learning from an immigration official that it’s easier to find sponsorship for families, Dottie enlists Juan to pose as her husband (“I ‘splain your wife I have no interest in you,” she reassures him, in unconscious homage to Ricky Ricardo). Juan is crushed when Carmela doesn’t appear at the refugee shelter to claim him, but soon falls in with the irrepressible Dottie. Juan’s aristocratic wife, Carmela (Anjelica Huston), and daughter Teresa (now grown into Trini Alvarado) did manage to escape the revolution, and are now living in a middle-class Miami suburb, supported by Carmela’s raving right-wing brother Angel (Diego Wallraff).
Among them are Dottie (Tomei), a hot-blooded woman whose American dream is to make love with John Wayne, and Juan Raul Perez (Alfred Molina), a former landowner who spent 20 years in jail for destroying his sugar crop rather than turn it over to Castro. It is 1980, in the last days of the Mariel boatlift, and Cuban refugees are pouring into Miami. Well, Cuba gets used again in “The Perez Family,” a sprawling, uneven, highly sentimental folk saga that must be meant to be the South Florida version of “Like Water for Chocolate” but falls lamentably short. PLAYING A LOVABLE, FULL-OF-LIFE prostitute in “The Perez Family,” Marisa Tomei proclaims, “I am like Cuba used by many, conquered by no one! Marisa Tomei, Alfred Molina, Anjelica Huston.
0 kommentar(er)
