Born in East L.A.

Herb Gallow3.5

You'll get a good acid test for 2019 when you see Cheech Marin triumphantly leading a wave of illegal immigrants over a hillside and into the United States as Neil Diamond plays in the background. Someone at a major studio would have a stroke if you pitched that to them now. Latino filmmakers of the world, reboot this movie and lay waste to whole provinces of Amalgamated Disney.If the soundtrack, neo-slapstick antics and teased hairdos haven't advertised which stop in the timeline you've arrived at, the presence of Daniel Stern certainly will. Firmly fixed in 1987, Born in East L.A. is everything about that era, the bad (Cheech following a woman in a car and commenting on her tits in the opening) and the good (unbridled silliness that leads to stuff like Cheech hiding from INS in a teddy bear costume). Best to turn the outrage-o-meter off for this one.This is surprisingly heartfelt, and that must have stunned people rigid coming as the first post-Cheech & Chong project for Marin. Rudy (Cheech Marin) is a huge goofball but a profoundly likeable dude, and even through his misadventures makes friends with a shady bar owner (Daniel Stern), a Salvadoran waitress (Kamala Lopez), a norteño band, numerous street people of Tijuana and a group of Asian immigrants that he humorously coaches into credible LA vatos. Having a likeable lead in a comedy like this is a dwindling concept these days, so that was a nice throwback.Cheech's thing, especially back in these days, is episodic comedy. Paul Rodriguez being terrorized by a portrait of Jesus speaking via answering machine probably didn't need to be there, I guess. Cheech giving a tattoo to a convict doing an inexplicable Curly Howard routine likely wasn't necessary. The whole subplot with Feo doesn't really affect things. I'm still glad they were there, though.For all of the lighthearted fun in this, the subject matter bites a bit. Anyone who looks remotely like Cheech will have stories about encounters with law enforcement or people assuming you're undocumented. Sometimes you just gotta laugh at it, man. A more solid comedy than expected from a producer that was fired midway through as the guy the studio chose to hold responsible for Howard the Duck.The 11s: Chicano Film

𝚣𝚎𝚞𝚜3.0

I rarely find a movie that has no reviews from friends but even rarer is one that doesn’t have any logs either. This wasn’t a household movie for me but one that I definitely remember watching as a kid with family, probably solely because of the humor and subject matter. My buddy and I almost completely threw out the idea of watching this when we saw the trailer a couple months back, but I’m glad we went through with it today on a whim.On it’s surface, the film can probably dismissed as an overly cartoonish comedy, but digging deeper there’s some good heartfelt messages and social commentary. I can’t imagine a movie like this being made nowadays, but I think the theme of immigrants chasing the American Dream could be explored through a satirical lens in a similar way. I definitely enjoyed this more than I expected to and that final scene was like the little Mexican kid’s version of the Avengers Assemble scene in Endgame.

arLopez2.5

The funniest part is that this movie could've been, easily, made in 2025. [Watched on Tubi.]