X
- 1987
- R
- Craze Productions
- 1 h 25 m
- 1987
- R
- Craze Productions
- 1 h 25 m
Summary When a native-born American citizen of Mexican descent is mistakenly deported to Mexico, he has to risk everything to get back home.
Directed By: Cheech Marin
Written By: Cheech Marin
- 1987
- R
- Craze Productions
- 1 h 25 m
- 1987
- R
- Craze Productions
- 1 h 25 m
Born in East L.A.
57
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
tbd
Summary When a native-born American citizen of Mexican descent is mistakenly deported to Mexico, he has to risk everything to get back home.
Directed By: Cheech Marin
Written By: Cheech Marin
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 10 Critic Reviews
57
40% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
30% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
30% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 10 Critic Reviews
57
40% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
30% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
30% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
An across-the-board winner, an exuberant crowd-pleaser that marks its writer-director-star Cheech Marin's first effort apart from his longtime partner Tommy Chong.
A throwaway comedy that really delivers.
Born in East L.A. is a real middle-of-the-roader as comedies go -- not hysterically funny, sort of laid back in pace, with a plot as substantial as the peso -- but its heart is as warm as an enchilada. [22 Aug 1987, p.B4]
Enormously good-natured - exactly the wrong tone for a comedy that needs all the rambunctious lunacy it can get. Instead, this story of an American mistakenly deported to Mexico as an illegal alien is amiable and plodding, the very last things you'd expect from Cheech, with or without Chong.
The result is a well-meaning bore, which isn't sure whether to play it for laughs or to make a serious point, and ends up missing out on both fronts.
In Born in East L.A., Marin plays it mostly for cheap laughs and only an occasional touch of pathos. In other words, he's taken the easy way out. And the script is so sketchy, the scenes so disconnected and the ideas so vacuous (even for Marin) that Born in East L.A. is in desperate need of a center it never finds in its 75 unfocused minutes. The film is a series of skits, blackouts and punchlines, but finished it's not.
It comes across, however, as a 90-minute flirtation with a quarter of an idea, the gist of which barely impinges on the consciousness. [24 Aug 1987]
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