Review: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

Reviews

Quinceañera

A Mexican coming-of-age story

By BROOKE HOLGERSON | August 9, 2006

3.0 Stars

Kind of a cross between a bat mitzvah and a sweet-sixteen party (only the girl is 15) party, quinceañera is the Mexican coming-of-age celebration that almost looks like a wedding. It’s a comparison that takes on poignancy in this film directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Magdalena (Emily Rios) is preparing for her quinceañera until her parents discover she’s pregnant and kick her out of the house. She moves in with her great-uncle (Chalo González) and her gay cousin (Jesse Garcia), who’s also been kicked out of his house, and they form a kind of family. Good acting and the directors’ unobtrusive style undercut what could have been a sappy TV-movie, and a subplot about gentrification in Echo Park, Los Angeles (where the film is set and was mostly shot), is handled carefully until the climax, when it threatens to collapse under its own weight. That it doesn’t is a major feat.

On the Web
Quinceañera official Web site: http://www.sonyclassics.com/quinceanera

Related: Rap Hashanah, Med Noir - side, The yenta monologues, More

Rap Hashanah
The Boston Jewish Music Connection kicked off the Jewish New Year not with a kegger or kippers but with a freestyle showdown of Jewish rappers.
Med Noir - side
The yenta monologues
What do you call a Conservative Jewish lesbian mother of two boys? Very funny, in the case of Judy Gold.
Making book
If obsession is at the core of The Rosenbach Company, says co-creator Ben Katchor, that only makes the pop musical a human story.
Vegas and Jungleland
Paul Shaffer is a happenin’ cat. Pick an It Moment from pop culture over the past 30 years and Shaffer was there. He was an original band member on Saturday Night Live . He played hapless promo guy Artie Fufkin in This Is Spinal Tap . Disco? He co-wrote “It’s Raining Men.” And he helped David Letterman break ground as his glittery, ironic bandleader/sidekick.
Holy nights
The Maccabees, the Holy Temple, the menorah that burned for eight days straight — all of these went unmentioned during JDub Records’ Chanukah celebration at the Paradise on Tuesday night.
Keeping Up with the Steins
Nowhere is the over-the-top bar mitzvah scene more ripe for satire, according to Scott Marshall’s family film, than in Los Angeles, where planning the reception can require almost as much energy, money, and BS as producing a feature film.
Unorthodox Jews
You won't hear feel-good Chanukah ditties in the style of the Leevees nor any pages out of Matisyahu's prayer book. This is a foul-mouthed, shtick-heavy act inspired by the borscht-belt comics and the seventies-era.
Trifecta
It’s hard to imagine a more diverse assemblage of bodies, temperaments, and performing presences than the roster for this year’s “Three Women Solo” at Summer Stages Dance.
Jewish blues
In Boston, it’s the season of Lódz.
Review: Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI
"You are here to kneel/Where prayer has been valid.” “Here” for T.S. Eliot was a church in Huntingdonshire, but it’s hard to imagine a place where prayer has been more valid than Jerusalem, or a place where more people have died for their faith.
Less

Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Culture and Lifestyle, Religion, More

| More

Friends' Activity

Popular

Most Viewed

See more deals

view all

[ 02/17 ] "Guys, Gals, and Glitter" @ Club Café

[ 02/17 ] Handel and Haydn Society conducted by Jean-Marie Zeitouni @ Symphony Hall

More Information

Watch the trailer for Quinceañera

ARTICLES BY BROOKE HOLGERSON

REVIEW: PAUL BLART: MALL COP | January 20, 2009
If you find the sight of a grown man rolling around the mall on a Segway hilarious, this is the movie for you.

TYLER PERRY’S THE FAMILY THAT PREYS | September 17, 2008
The prolific Tyler Perry is at it again, offering subpar entertainment to audiences so starved for sustenance they’ll eat his cheese.

THE ROCKER | August 20, 2008
Rainn Wilson of The Office gets promoted to the big screen with this anemic comedy directed by The Full Monty helmer Peter Cattaneo.

KIT KITTREDGE: AN AMERICAN GIRL | July 01, 2008
Although her film has as much visual flair as an after-school special, director Patricia Rozema gives an appealing attention to period detail, and Breslin is sweet in her first starring role.

REPRISE | May 21, 2008
Trier captures the moment when the recklessness of youth gives way to adult responsibilities, and the way childhood friendships can fall apart when different paths are taken.

See all articles by: BROOKE HOLGERSON

Most Viewed

Most Emailed

ANARCHISTIC AND SELF-TRAINED, ARE STREET MEDICS THE FUTURE OF FIRST AID?
April 25, 2009: outside of the IMF/World Bank meeting in Washington, DC, police with batons are attacking a group of protesters.

THE OVERDUB TAMPERING COMMITTEE
Armed with an idea, a hastily written manifesto, a press release, and some software to disguise my computer's IP address, I was able to raise the question, "How do you know that what you're illegally downloading is the actual music it claims to be?" This is a story about how my pop-music infatuation led me to fabricating a web of lies I called the Overdub Tampering Committee.

OUT: PREPARING FOR ONE H.E.L.L. OF A WEEKEND IN CAMBRIDGE
Next weekend at the Democracy Center in Harvard Square, Vermont DIY label Get Stoked! Records and bike safety group Helping Everyone Live Long (H.E.L.L.) will co-host a weekend with a stacked line-up of Northeast punk, hardcore, indie rock, pop-punk, and emo bands.

MAY YOU AND PORTLANDIA BE VERY HAPPY TOGETHER!
Thanks to Portlandia I now know way too much about you guys and your grody inner lives. It's not the show itself — it doesn't have that power. It's your horrifying enthusiasm for the show that has granted me this mirror.

BOSTON BALLET'S 'SIMPLY SUBLIME'
Boston Ballet's "Simply Sublime" (at the Opera House through February 19) traverses 20th-century ballet's arc from Russian romance to a robust and confident neoclassicism.