A Day Without a Mexican

In this feature-length expansion of what originally began as a short film, the central conceit is that one morning all (or nearly all) of California's Latinos suddenly disappear and the state is completely cut off from contact with the outside world by an impenetrable pink fog that settles along its borders. One can imagine this setup leading to either an earnest, didactic Twilight Zone imitation or a sharp political satire, but writer-director Sergio Arau makes the mistake of trying to have it both ways, and as a result neither half satisfies. Employing interlocking story threads, multiple characters, quick editing, and frequent shifts of perspective, as well as periodic title cards providing statistical data, and appearances by phony commentators, conspiracy theorists, and Rapture fanatics, the film vacillates between preachy tract and bland comedy. A Day Without a Mexican ultimately argues that nurture is more powerful than nature (i.e., the environment in which one is raised is more important than genetics or ethnicity), but the movie clubs us over the head with this already-widely-accepted thesis without making us laugh much. The amateurish quality of the production and the generally mediocre acting (with John Getz especially irritating as a dumb politician) don't help, with the end result being that the film is simply too confused and inept to do justice to its provocative premise. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)