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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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Man on Wire
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Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
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84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
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82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Frost/Nixon
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
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Fear(s) of the Dark
68
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Hunger
67
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67
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Appaloosa
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63
Eden
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Changeling
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Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
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Special
57
Sixty Six
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Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
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54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
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43
Tru Loved
43
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41
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40
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40
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34
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34
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32
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31
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30
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28
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27
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26
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26
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xx
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xx
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Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Spanglish
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some sexual content and brief language
Starring
Adam Sandler,
Téa Leoni,
Paz Vega,
Cloris Leachman,
Aimee Garcia,
Matt Battaglia,
and
Sean Smith
A look at cultures colliding, as a beautiful native Mexican woman (Vega) becomes the housekeeper for an affluent Los Angeles family (Sandler, Leoni). Of all the horrifying pitfalls she worried about in this new culture, she never fathomed the peril of being truly embraced by an upscale American family. (Sony)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
James L. Brooks
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
James L. Brooks
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: April 5, 2005
Theatrical: December 17, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
131 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
A rich blend of humor and heartbreak.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
A pepperpot bubbling with pungent insights and sharp wit, Spanglish is about how people, like cultures, are more alike than not.

88
USA Today
Mike Clark
The one movie families search for every Christmas for an outing, the way "Something's Gotta Give" was last year and "Jerry Maguire" was in 1996.

88
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
What he's (Brooks) come up with is one of the most humane works ever made about the lives of working mothers.

80
Empire
Ian Freer
A satisfying and grown-up flick that boasts all of James L. Brooks' strengths. It's good to welcome back a unique, low-key voice.

80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Above all, the movie's funny and wicked fun.

80
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Brooks is solidly in charge of this feel-good fairy tale as he gets terrific performances from everyone including two super-talented child actors.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
trong on characters and relationships, but weak on some of the details that would elevate it from merely "good" to "great."

75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The movie is not quite the sitcom the setup seems to suggest; there are some character quirks that make it intriguing.

75
Premiere
Peter Debruge
Doesn't always work -- like its title, the movie straddles two separate worlds, landing squarely in the dreaded realm of "dramedy" -- but it's a noble effort.

70
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Though Brooks has a broad, crowd-pleasing sensibility, he knows how to appeal to the masses without insulting anyone's intelligence, and that's a rare gift these days.

67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Much of it is funny and endearing, and its toned-down star, Adam Sandler, is as winning as he's ever been.

63
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
An unusually shallow and facile work for Brooks, but the writing and the performances - other than Leoni's - keep us at least halfway involved.
63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The message in Spanglish is thoughtful and astute; it's the delivery that could use some work.

63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
There's a wonderfully subversive film buried somewhere in Spanglish, but it's never allowed to get out.

60
TV Guide
Angel Cohn
Surprisingly heartfelt tale.

60
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Frustrating though it can be, Spanglish still proves to be as resilient as its characters.

60
Newsweek
David Ansen
Spanglish feels hemmed in, visually monotonous. There are signs that a lot has been cut, and in trimming his film Brooks may have squeezed too tight: his movie needs breathing space.

50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Ultimately more exasperating than rewarding.

50
Chicago Tribune
Allison Benedikt
Only resonates when he (Brooks) strips it all away and focuses on parent and child.

50
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Whatever message Brooks was trying to put across with Spanglish, it clearly got lost in translaaaaaaaaaaation.

50
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Brooks has an uncanny talent for making us feel insightful.

50
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Leoni is a very attractive woman, and she should be credited for giving a brave performance, but her character starts to produce involuntary shudders when she appears onscreen.

50
Portland Oregonian
Barry Johnson
Could have had charm if the characters had been more recognizable as human beings.
40
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
I've enjoyed Ms. Leoni's comic gifts in the past, and I'll enjoy them again, but Spanglish asks her to play crazed, and she delivers with a performance of unremitting, crazymaking shrillness.
40
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Mr. Sandler has a solid, fumbling likability, without which Spanglish would be not merely annoying but despicable in its slick complacency.

40
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
Never quite works, despite the wonderful performances or the decency in the screenplay's margins.

40
Village Voice
Amy Taubin
The beauty of Sandler's performance -- a superbly modulated suite of crestfallen groans and grimaces -- is he often seems to be reacting not just to his crazy wife but also to the dismal movie he's stuck in.

40
Village Voice
Dennis Lim
The beauty of Sandler's performance -- a superbly modulated suite of crestfallen groans and grimaces -- is he often seems to be reacting not just to his crazy wife but also to the dismal movie he's stuck in.

40
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Short on real drama and incident and long on tedium.

38
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
As a romance, Spanglish is like a wholesome flirt who drags things out and becomes a tiresome tease. As a satire of upper-middle-class Los Angeles, it's a disaster.

30
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
It's unclear what Brooks is trying to say about our melting-pot culture, if anything.

30
The New Yorker
David Denby
Spanglish chokes on an excess of sincerity and guilt, and, in retrospect, its failure may turn out to be momentous for a sincere and guilty community--Hollywood liberals in a state of post-election dismay.

30
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
So rancid is Brooks's fury that it's clouded his judgment, so that each of his main characters is a stereotype of the most broad-brush, malodorous nature.

30
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
The pacing is off, the emotional tone is wobbly, and none of the actors seem to be acting in the same style or the same movie.

25
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
This is a deeply unpleasant movie masquerading as a heartfelt social commentary on life in these United States.

20
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
Spanglish is Brooks' unqualified kitchen disaster - a desperate, shapeless, overreaching big-screen sitcom of a movie that just wants to be loved. Is that so wrong?
In a word, yes.


The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 53 User Votes
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