"Spanglish"

As with all of Brooks' past films, "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good as It Gets" among them, "Spanglish" is sitcom deep while affecting a tone that's somewhere between observational comedy and a group therapy session. The characters crack wise and open up and reveal themselves through their heartaches and foibles. And the fact that they are struggling toward honesty is meant to make us admire them, even though the worst of them -- the Shirley MacLaine character in "Terms of Endearment," the Jack Nicholson character in "As Good as It Gets," Téa Leoni's Deborah here -- are monsters.

If Deborah were allowed the stylization given to screwball comedy characters, she might simply be presented as one of those rich dizzy dames incapable of seeing beyond her own nose, like Alice Brady in "My Man Godfrey," convinced she's helping the Depression poor by taking part in a scavenger hunt for charity. By pretending that he's getting inside the character while never trying to evince any empathy for her, Brooks pretty much guarantees we'll see Deborah as an evil bitch. I would love to know what occurred on the set of "Spanglish," because you can't watch Leoni's performance without imagining that she gave Brooks hell every step of the way.

There was a moment in "Flirting With Disaster" in which Leoni gave a surreptitious lick to her finger to slide off her wedding ring that suggested the great crazy spark some comics are lucky enough to have. Leoni's performance in "Spanglish" is a flabbergasting demonstration of comic technique that inarguably confirms that she is a wildly gifted comic actress. Leoni's Deborah enters in a state of breathlessness and never seems to regain full control. It's one long whirligig of a performance and yet, through no fault of Leoni's, it's not very funny: I could barely stand to watch her. The cruelty and self-absorbed cluelessness that might be breathtaking were they stylized are presented naturalistically -- and they are so horrendous it's no wonder we reject the character.

It's a measure of how bad Brooks' direction is here that given an actor of Leoni's talents, he can't abandon his own puny conception to find a way to make the performance work. But it's emblematic of "Spanglish," in which his control over the mawkish, pushy material isn't quite as hideously assured as it has been in his past films. The pacing is off, the emotional tone is wobbly, and none of the actors seem to be acting in the same style or the same movie.

As Leoni's alcoholic mother, a former torch singer, Cloris Leachman does the wise, wacky old codger routine so scene-chewingly that she's a cinch for an Oscar nomination. As long as Spanish actor Paz Vega is speaking Spanish, you can fool yourself that she's somewhat appealing. That ends when Flor learns English and Vega is stuck with Brooks' crappy dialogue. And it's hard to know what Brooks was thinking in his direction of Adam Sandler.

Sandler's character is a man who just wants his marriage to work, to the point of being self-effacing and ineffectual. But the combination of public milquetoastiness and the rage he unleashes in private makes the character seem more unbalanced and socially inept than the character Sandler played in "Punch-Drunk Love." The movie is supposed to show a growing attraction between Vega and Sandler, an emotional understanding that bypasses the language, class and race barriers, but there's no chemistry between them.

And that's a problem if we're supposed to believe that Flor leaves her job because, as she says, there are some risks you don't take when you have kids. She and John never seem to be in danger of doing more than a little midnight hand-holding. They both clearly know where to draw the line. Which makes her decision to quit her job all the more capricious -- how exactly is she going to provide for herself and her daughter?

The pain of parental sacrifice has long been the staple of weepers like "Imitation of Life" and "Stella Dallas." In "Spanglish," it's the child who has to sacrifice for the mother's pride. The movie gives Flor an out. The story is told to us in voice-over, as Cristina's Princeton application essay, so we're spared the possibility that Flor's decision cost her daughter anything. And lest we miss the message, Cristina even tells Princeton that she doesn't need the school's acceptance in order to accept herself. (There's a sure winner of an approach to take with the Ivy League.)

In any sensible terms, a mother who impedes her child's education as Flor does is a lousy mother. In the terms laid down by "Spanglish," she's a good Mexican, the kind who knows her place.

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