lasttimeisaw The film is kind of a moot for me initially, maybe I don't possess the cultural background of Cuban influence and American living experience. I find the film is an oddball with frustration, the narrative itself is featherweight, all the conflicts and explosive set pieces are squandered, the character moulding process is also bumpy and cursory, all the time what we saw are alternative quarreling between the brothers, sometimes trivial, sometimes sentimental (on the grounds of an appealing Antonio Banderas at his prime youth), otherwise too showy indeed, maybe the whole milieu has some exotic appeal to some people, with regard to me, the effect is a regretful null. The only saving grace of the film is its Oscar-nominated theme song, the ever famous BEAUTIFUL MARIA OF MY SOUL (could be better interpreted by another singer than Armand Assante), in my opinion the original score by Carlos Franzetti and Robert Kraft contains much more vibrant and soulful vibes. The two co-leaders Assante and Banderas are uncannily overblown and understated respectively, the bittersweet brotherhood lachrymosity is too gusty to digest. And the counter- part female characters (a chimney-voice Cathy Moriarty and a stolid Maruschka Detmers) all fail to catch their own shining moments. A rather spirit-lifting Celia Cruz is my desperate guilty pleasure (I love her performance during the end-credits). The scheme of the tragic accident is lousy and abrupt, which furthermore reflects the pompousness and self-consciousness of the ending. The film itself is just another Hollywood throwaway, kitschy and insincere, what a pity, it has Antonio Banderas in his heyday.

ccthemovieman-1 Excellent "mambo" music and colorful characters made me rate this a "9" after the first viewing. After several looks, the novelty - how many mambo movies are there? - wore off and it settled in as an "8 stars" film but I don't regret seeing this several times. It's fun to watch.Armand Assante was particularly good in here and I was intrigued with Maruschka Detmers, a new face which at times looked striking. Since she resides in France and hasn't made many, if any, English-speaking films, we here in North America haven't really seen her since this film. Assante and Antonio Bandaras are the two leads, however, sharing the spotlight with the music. Both actors are excellent, maybe the best roles of their careers.The story moves best the first 40 minutes with a lot of that "hot" music but then gets a little melodramatic afterward. However, I found it interesting all the way through with a nice tale of brotherly love and devotion. For all you "Ricky Ricardo" fans of "I Love Lucy" television: if you want a real feel of Latin Americans-in America during the 1950s, check this film out.

dw002m The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is one of those novels that, despite a fantastic story, great characters, and overall brilliance, should not be taken to the silver screen.This was a weak adaptation of what is arguably Oscar Hijuelos' best novel. Are the characters intact? Mostly. Is the music good? Yes. But the story is drastically different.Novels like this simply cannot be compressed into a standard feature-length film. Too much character development is lost (along with half of the plot!), and the standard Hollywood story changes deprive the viewer of worthwhile material.The point is, despite some points of tragedy, this film was basically a feel-good story with an uplifting ending. Maybe you could call it a "romantic tragedy." But that's not how the novel played out, and when the studio cuts out the real tragedies of the story, we the viewers pay the price.

aromatic-2 If you are into the mambo beat, and I am, that alone should make for the foundation of a good movie. Add two prime hunks of beefcake like Assante and Banderas. There is also a chance to see the incomparable Tito Puente perform. Further add the immensely talented Shakespearean-trained Roscoe Lee Browne and Desi Arnaz Jr. portraying his father, and you should have a can't-miss experience. Wrong!It starts with the directorial debut by Arne (formerly Arnold) Glimscher. Everything is angry and in-your-face. Plot motivations and character motivations are given short shrift or ignored altogether except for ubiquitous anger. The camera angles are out of control. Even the can't-miss score is mishandled and inappropriately matched to different scenes. The pacing is non-existent. The piece-de-resistance is a slow-mo death scene that even Ed Wood could have directed better.The less said about the *#@%$@* writing the better. This is one of those movies that tries to show you how macho it is by non-stop cursing. But even the non-expletive dialogue is disgusting.The performances are simply dreadful. In other comments here, I saw that someone called this Banderas' best performance. Huh??? It is, by far, his worst. He renounces it himself! He read his English phonetically and it showed. He was stiff, unconvincing, and totally out-of-sync. He's gorgeous, of course, but his character is too important for that alone to be enough.Since Armand Assante was playing off him in almost every scene, it threw his timing totally off-balance and accentuated his anger and frustration. His character also did some implausibly stupid things given his background. Cathy Moriarity does what she can in her scenes with Assante, and there he almost seems like a totally different character, one you can stand spending some time with.The stentorian Roscoe Lee Browne humiliates himself as a Cuban mobster in a pathetically phony accent. Desi Arnaz's scenes give the viewer some unintentional comic relief. Equally hilarious is the eighty-something Puente's attempt to play himself at 45.Overall, if I were ever asked to teach a class on film, I would use this as my warning lesson on what traps to avoid.