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The film is very low budget, and admittedly didn’t get
much play and exposure, but I think this is a film everyone should see.
Because the story asks, what if American’s Mexicans suddenly disappeared
one day? Well, in effect, what if America’s “laziest race” disappeared
one day? Well, then we’d have a nation of lazy Caucasians, wouldn’t we?
And we’d have an actual
group of people, whom are Americans who will not work. And we’d be at
war with one another. And we’d be calling each other sub-human, wouldn’t
we? “A Day without a Mexican” is not just a satire on the Mexican
sub-culture, but an indictment on America on the Hispanic sub-culture.
But I’m trying to figure out what the hell
was going through the writers minds when making this. “A Day without a
Mexican” has the surefire chance to spoof all the political commentary
it musters up, yet fails big time. Why? Because it instead completely
misses the point of its own message, and by the second half completely
turns into a drama/thriller.
The Mexicans have disappeared
and now the world has
to survive on its own, and the film almost becomes
post-apocalyptic.
And in the end, the director creates all this
forward progression only to revert back to the condescending
tone it possessed in the first half. Nothing has really
changed even when, in quite a muddling fashion, the white
characters have to fend for themselves, and find a way to
hire workers that actually want to work i.e. the Mexicans. |
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And as good an
actress as Yareli Arizmendi
is, even she can’t save this boring, and awfully stupid thriller
that is never sure what it’s trying to say, and can never decide if
it wants to be a dark comedy, or an honest to goodness thriller.
Thus
the film feels scattered, and inept, and takes a golden opportunity
slamming it into the floor. And when it does actually revert to the
comedy, the gags are hit and miss, because even the gags end up
stale and rather clunky. Halfway into it when Arizmendi is
attempting to discover where the Mexicans have gone, and begins
having an emotional breakdown, many of the audience members will be
inclined to ask “Wasn’t this a comedy?” And they’ll feel manipulated
into watching a drama that shoves its message down our throats,
instead of a dark comedy that puts society to task.
Even though the message can be quite clever,
viewers will be hard pressed to find honest laughs and chuckles in this
quasi-comedy that instead transforms into a thriller mid-way, and a
rather muddled thriller at that. “A Day without a Mexican” is not as
brilliant as it thinks, it’s not even that good.
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