Born in East L.A. (1987) Universal/Comedy RT: 85 minutes Rated R (language) Director: Cheech Marin Screenplay: Cheech Marin Music: Lee Holdridge Cinematography: Alex Phillips Jr. Release date: August 21, 1987 (US) Cast: Cheech Marin, Daniel Stern, Paul Rodriguez, Jan Michael Vincent, Kamala Lopez, Tony Plana, Lupe Ontiveros. Box Office: $17.3M (US)
Rating: ***
The comedy Born in East L.A., based on Cheech Marin’s parody of Bruce Springsteen’s hit song “Born in the USA”, is the first movie Cheech made without his longtime partner Tommy Chong. It’s Chong-less. It’s also drug-free save for a brief scene involving pot smugglers. But is it funny? The answer is yes, mostly. It’s an amiable little comedy that stumbles a little bit here and there, tripping only at the end with an abrupt closing scene.*
Talk about your bad days, Rudy Robles (Marin) is about to have the worst. The East Los Angeles native is picked up in an immigration raid when he goes to a factory to pick up his cousin Javier (Rodriguez, D.C. Cab), newly arrived to the US. Since he has no way of proving he’s an American (he left his wallet at home and his family is in Fresno for a week), he’s deported to Mexico. He’s double screwed because he can only speak a few words of Spanish. After repeated attempts to cross the border himself prove unsuccessful, Rudy makes a deal with jack-of-all-crimes Jimmy (Stern, Get Crazy) to work a series of odd jobs to earn the money needed for a coyote to smuggle him into his home country.
Rudy’s jobs include luring customers into a sleazy strip club and teaching English to five would-be illegal immigrants described by Jimmy as “Chinese Indians”- two Central Americans and three Chinese. The latter is the funniest with Rudy teaching them to walk, talk and wear their bandanas like East L.A. vatos – “Hey man, whaaas sappening?” During his stay in Mexico, he falls in love with Dolores (Lopez, Deep Cover), an immigrant from El Salvador working a few jobs to earn money to go to the US.
Born in East L.A. is the first movie I ever remember seeing at a drive-in. It was during my visit with my cousin in El Paso, TX (how appropriate) in August ’87. It was paired with Up in Smoke. I was a little put off by the Spanish subtitles but I enjoyed it otherwise. Universal didn’t market it heavily due to the firing of studio executive Frank Price after Howard the Duck laid an egg the year before. He’s the one who convinced Cheech to turn his hit novelty song (and music video) into a movie. They dropped it into a late August release slot expecting it to bomb. Instead, the low-budget comedy was a modest success making roughly $17 million at the box office. It even got a few decent reviews from critics.
While it has plenty of laughs and chuckles, Born in East L.A. isn’t particularly well made. Once Rudy gets deported, it becomes a series of gags and scenes designed to add pathos to the slim material. Cheech, who also writes and directs, misses the opportunity to really say something about immigration and the experience of being an illegal alien. He occasionally goes dark with scenes of Rudy being jailed in Mexico where he encounters a sinister figure, Feo (Plana, Three Amigos), who extorts money from him in the name of Jesus. It feels out of step with the movie’s overall pleasant tone.
A funny running joke has Cousin Javier, now staying at Rudy’s family’s house, believing that a portrait of Jesus is speaking to him directly. He doesn’t know that the portrait is covering the phone and answering machine so every time somebody leaves a message, he thinks it’s Jesus. He gets really freaked out when such a call comes while he’s watching the Playboy Channel. The love story between Rudy and Dolores is sweet; the two actors have nice chemistry. Cheech is a likable guy; he’s convincing as an Everyman who never loses his compassion in a crazy, seemingly inescapable situation. The scene where he helps out a poor family is nice. Stern is believable a shady type with a heart. Jan Michael Vincent’s (TV’s Airwolf) role as an immigration officer is little more than a glorified cameo. In general, the cast does a good job in a movie that doesn’t ask too much of them.
The other part of Born in East L.A. that gets me laughing is the scene near the end where Rudy, Dolores and an army of immigrants make a final run for the border to the tune of Neil Diamond’s “America”. I just wish it ended on a tighter nore with all dilemmas resolved and all plot threads tied off. Okay, so Born in East L.A. is rough around the edges, but it’s agreeable enough that you won’t mind too much. It’s gently funny as opposed to in-your-face. It works better than it should.
*= The television version of Born in East L.A. has an extended ending that ties off a major loose end.
