Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

“Nothing Like the Holidays” is a bittersweet movie set in the Latino Chicago neighborhood of Humboldt Park. The slightly goofy patriarch of the Rodriguez family, Eduardo (Alfred Molina) owns a supermercado (everyone calls it a bodega, but to me it’s too big to be that). His wife Anna  (Elizabeth Peña) is ticked off at the calls he takes on his cell phone as their children converge to celebrate a family Christmas.

A physically and emotionally scarred Jesse (Freddy Rodriguez) is back from Iraq. Roxanna (Vanessa Ferlito) is back from Hollywood, where she has been floundering. The eldest Mauricio (John Leguizamo), says he is about to make partner in a New York law firm. His Jewish wife Sarah (Debra Messing) is a successful money-fund manager and putting off pregnancy even though she is already 36. Pressure for a grandchild comes from Anna.

Each of the unmarried Rodriquez children is carrying a torch for someone left behind in the old neighborhood. Plus there are cousins and employees at the store. There seem to be as many characters and as many fraught romances as in “Love Actually,” plus some serious problems not involving forging or maintaining romantic connections, including cancer, murder (after-effects), survivor guilt, and culture clash (Sarah should be a WASP for this, I think).

There are many predictable resolutions though some surprises, too. In that Peña is only three years older than Leguizamo, playing his mother is startling, but she’s very good with (against?) Alfred Molina.

Leguizamo and Messing are both restrained (the antic one is a cousin played by Luis Guzmán). Well, Leguizamo reprises a spastic dance from his childhood twice...

It took me a while to recognize Rodriguez and Messing, though there are some aspects of their TV roles in their roles here.

There are many funny moments, not least failed attempts to take down a tree in the front yard that Anna has been complaining about for years. (Like the characters, it may look ungainly but its roots are deep…)There are some treacley bits, too, including the caroling.

Two very underplayed scenes particularly impressed me: one in the street between Messing and Peña, and another in an apartment stairwell (and then out into an alleyway) between Manny Perez (an employee at the store who is quasi-family) and Jay Hernandez (a gang-banger). These very unshowy exchanges are what make what is often rather standard family holiday gathering soap opera special, along with the shift to a Latino family in a Latino neighborhood.

A number of characters break through various psychic barriers, including Anna appreciating Sarah and fully accepting her into the family (“There are many Puerto Rican Jews in San Juan.”

The salsa soundtrack is charming, the photography and editing workmanlike. Like many people today, the movie is overstuffed (with secrets and neuroses rather than turkey and pumpkin pie). Though the scenes I’ve mentioned demonstrate how less can be more, the movie as a whole (like “Love Actually”) has too much going on (try a lot of things and some will affect viewers, seems the underlying motivation for the screenplay by Alison Swan and Rick Najera —and in that for me some did, I guess it was a successful strategy!).

©2009, Stephen O. Murray

4 Lean-n-Mean 8 and "Get Those Holiday Reviews Out" Write-Off. Also see my best holidaze movies posting.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD