by KEVIN LAFOREST, MATTHEW HAYS, SARAH ROWLAND
and MARK SLUTSKY

Spanglish

Believe it or not, this movie is part of Adam Sandler's bid for legitimacy. He's stepping away from frat-boy roles to this, an annoyingly feel-good feature from sitcom genius James L. Brooks (The Simpsons, Mary Tyler Moore). Sandler is a famous chef (!) who is married to Tea Leoni, an actress handed the entirely thankless job of portraying a selfish California wife and mother, self-obsessed and utterly unlikeable. They need hired help, and naturally turn to L.A.'s massive Mexican immigrant population. They end up with the camera-friendly Paz Vega, who - get ready for the punchline - can't speak a word of English!

Spanglish suffers from the identity crisis its title suggests. Is this a family melodrama? Is this a romantic comedy? Is this a subtle retelling of Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life, with its commentary on race and class? Sadly, it ends up being little more than a maudlin mess - a film that will leave almost no one satisfied. Sandler fans will despise the fact that he's not handed enough shtick. Chicks will see this as a betrayal of the chick formula, with Leoni having no redeeming qualities (not even in the 11th hour). There are funny bits, for sure, but not nearly enough of them. Ultimately, Spanglish is about as appealing as its trailer makes it look. (MH)

She Hate Me

Canned from his job for exposing corporate corruption, Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie) decides to make a living as a high-end stud. With an endless supply of potent sperm, he realizes he's a natch at knocking up well-to-do lesbians. At 10 grand a head, he's got a good thing going. It's not until around the 18th hole that he starts to question the moral implications of inseminating so many women at once. But not before Spike Lee subjects us to a montage of his leading man drilling it into rich childless hetrophobes that all they really need is a good lay with a hot brother to rid them of their "dick issues." After all, some of these women don't even know what circumcised means. Funny, I didn't know being gay meant living under a rock.

Carpet munchers aren't the only female characters with a lack of direction here. Jack's loving mother, for instance, threatens to shank his diabetic father because she resents having to care for the invalid. Ellen Barkin plays a corporate lackey who backstabs Jack at the beginning of the movie and then decides to show her softer side by stiffly talking about her abortions in what is supposed to be an intimate and revealing conversation.

In between all of his post-modern feminist misfires, Lee tries to be funny by superimposing Jack's face on animated spermheads as they fight their way upstream. Here's the kicker: if the egg belongs to an unattractive bull dyke, the sperm is less enthusiastic about the long journey ahead. But if those uterine walls belong to a babe, look out, it's every sperm head for himself. Funny stuff. As a filmmaker, Lee is shooting more blanks than a Tour de France cyclist on crack with this lame turkeybaster. (SR)

Flight of the Phoenix

Director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines) is in the pilot's seat for this remake of Robert Aldrich's 1965 classic The Flight of the Phoenix. Set among the high dunes of Mongolia's desolate Gobi desert, the film stars Dennis Quaid (in the Jimmy Stewart role) as a cocky pilot shuttling passengers home from an oil dig. When the plane goes down in a sandstorm, the surviving passengers - who include A.J. (Tyrese Gibson), Kelly (Miranda Otto) and Elliott (Giovanni Ribisi) - must figure out a way to stay alive in the desert wilds. With no rescue forthcoming, plane designer Elliott comes up with an outrageous plan: to reconstruct a new aircraft from the wreckage of the old. And away we go!

Movies where people are stranded in an inhospitable environment and living by their wits are usually at least somewhat entertaining, and Flight of the Phoenix is no exception. It's kind of like Alive without the cannibalism. There's definitely a corny '80s vibe to a lot of the scenes, especially an unforgivable montage where our destitute, half-starved, half-dehydrated heroes hook up an iPod to a boom box and get down to "Hey Ya!" But overall the cast is pretty decent, with Quaid doing his ageing all-American thing and Ribisi off on some kind of weirdo sociopathic tangent. I'm not saying this is a great movie by any stretch of the imagination (or even a particularly good one), but if you caught it on TV late at night, you probably wouldn't change the channel. (MS)

Ma vie en cinémascope

Alys Robi was our first great international singing star, but today she's almost as (in)famous for her stays in mental institutions as she was for her great showmanship. Hence, the film opens in 1952 as she's about to get lobotomized. Then it flashes back to the standout moments in her personal and professional life. We see her sing around Quebec City at five, run away at 13 to perform in Montreal with la Poune, then keep growing in popularity until she's singing in London and Hollywood.

This sounds like an inspirational rags-to-riches story, but it's hard to enjoy it since the movie keeps flashing to Alys in the nuthouse. It's also difficult to believe that she was a woman too independent for her time because the film defines her mostly through the men she loves. She keeps falling for the great men she works with (notably Olivier Guimond and Lucio Agostini) even though they're married, then she gets hurt and goes into a deep depression. You never get a clear handle of what makes her tick besides the manic-depressive thing.

This is a rather superficial picture, zooming through events as if it was a trailer for itself, all montage, one-liners and overwhelming music. Still, Pascale Bussières does what she can in the lead and she displays surprising singing skills when she takes on Robi's kitschy "Latin-American Serenades." Director Denise Filiatrault obviously cares about her subject, but she fails to make Alys Robi's tragic story resonate as more than a melodramatic movie-of-the-week. (KL)

She Hate Me (at Parc), Spanglish, Flight of the Phoenix and Ma vie en cinémascope open Friday, Dec. 17

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