Citizen Cheech: Born in East L.A.

Long before Spielberg started taking heat from critics for the opportunities he had wasted with his adaptation of Andrew Niccol's The Terminal, classical film auteur Cheech Marin was wasting an equally promising premise with the 1987 movie version of his song-and-MTV-video “Born in East L.A.”

The main question posed by this movie is quite simple: if you were caught without your driver's license or other ID, how exactly would you prove you're an American citizen? More importantly, how could you keep yourself from getting deported? Granted, this is not the type of question that most Americans have to worry about. But there are unfortunately some Americans who have to worry about this question far more than other Americans. And while much of this film has become dated, this aspect unfortunately has not.

It would be nice to say this is a great film or even a promising comedy. But unfortunately, Marin never quite develops the plot enough to qualify the movie for either description. Too much of the film's running time is wasted on unfunny skits and overly sentimental subplots. And while the movie itself is not painfully bad, it hardly lives up to the promise of the main premise.

So why do I watch it so often?

Perhaps because it's one of the few movies that attempts to make a point about America's Kafkaesque immigration policies.

Or perhaps because of Daniel Stern's performance as a Tijuana conman who reveals in an understated scene that he -- unlike Cheech's character -- can never go back home to the US.

It's certainly not because of Paul Rodriguez, whose performance as a dumb immigrant can be mercifully described as being not much better than it should be.

Anyway, it hardly seems like the type of film that the Bill O'Reillys of the world would approve of, and it's tempting to recommend it for that reason alone.

But only if El Norte or Lone Star are not available...