MOVIE REVIEW : ‘EAST L.A.’ GETS THE GREEN CARD

“Born in East L.A.” (citywide) is 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.

It has more drive and energy than “La Bamba,” which also examines Latino life, and it comes as a happy revelation to one who always found Cheech and Chong’s pot humor puerile and tedious. Yet, inexplicably, Universal, despite the crossover success of “La Bamba,” made the “marketing decision” not to preview the film for the press until it had opened to the public. You don’t have to be Latino to get a lift and lots of laughs from “Born in East L.A.”

Marin has come up with a great, simple idea and then has run with it the full, hilarious distance. He casts himself as Rudy Robles, an auto mechanic and an East Los Angeles native (and third-generation American) who can’t really speak Spanish. He’s deported to Tijuana as an illegal alien when he goes to a downtown toy factory to pick up a Mexican cousin (Paul Rodriguez) and walks smack into an immigration raid and an implacable nemesis, “Body Count” McCalister (Jan Michael Vincent) of the INS. In a rush to pick up his cousin, poor Rudy has run out of the house without his wallet.

The way Marin handles the penniless Rudy’s plight in Tijuana brings to mind the way Charlie Chaplin treated the misadventures of his beloved Tramp. This is to say that Marin, once having made Rudy’s predicament completely real, takes off on the loveliest flights of fancy as Rudy discovers with unconscious pleasure his resilience in surviving by his wits. None is more delicious than his coaching of a group of OTMs (Other Than Mexicans), illegals some of whom are Asians, on how to pass themselves off as East L.A. dudes, right down to the laid-back walk and barrio greeting, “Wass Sappening?” (Headbands worn low will hide slanted eyes.)

Then there is an exquisitely staged sequence in which Rudy, selling oranges to raise enough money to pay a “coyote” to smuggle him back home, tosses a little boy an orange only to have his mother proudly refuse the gesture. The sequence has a double payoff: The beautiful Salvadoran refugee (Kamala Lopez) with whom Rudy falls in love, witnesses the scene and revises her heretofore dubious feelings about Rudy, and the mother and her kids will later come to his rescue when he is mugged. A master of the inspired running gag--especially in regard to that non-English-speaking Mexican cousin back in East L.A.--Marin makes everything he sets up eventually pay off later.

Marin discovers wonderful cross-cultural humor in music, starting with his popular parody of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” which gives his film its title. Then he has Rudy try to teach “Twist and Shout” to a norteno folk trio trying to play “La Bamba.” To elicit coins from some Teutonic-looking tourists, Rudy, who was stationed in West Germany while in the Army, sings “Roll Out the Barrel” in German. “Born in East L.A.” is a splendid example of discovering the universal in the particular.

If Marin has written himself the part of a lifetime, he has also given Daniel Stern his best shot yet as an American con man on the lam who has become the slickest coyote on the block. Complete with redneck drawl and snappy clothes, Stern’s Jimmy is a classic folksy all-American villain with a sense of humor to match his greed. Tony Plana has a funny bit as a gold-toothed, Bible-quoting villain.

Photographed by the gifted veteran of the Mexican cinema, Alex Phillips Jr., “Born in East L.A.” has a great, sunny look and terrific ethnic atmosphere yet does not gloss over hardship, poverty or injustice. Without saying so much as a single word that could be even remotely described as preachy, Cheech Marin makes his points about the second-class nature of American citizenship for ethnic minorities and the desperate situation in which illegal aliens find themselves.

Yet when Neil Diamond’s “America” swells on the sound track at the climax of this irresistible movie, there is nothing cynical or satirical about its use. “Born in East L.A.” (rated an unduly harsh R for some earthy talk and gestures) says you don’t have to be a WASP to love your country, warts and all.

‘BORN IN EAST L.A.’ A Universal release of a Clear Type production. Executive producer Stan Coleman. Producer Peter MacGregor Scott. Writer-director Cheech Marin. Camera Alex Phillips Jr. Music Lee Holdridge. Art directors J. Rae Fox, Lynda Burbank, Hector Rodriguez. Film editor Don Brochu. With Cheech Marin, Daniel Stern, Paul Rodriguez, Jan Michael Vincent, Kamala Lopez, Alma Martinez, Tony Lopez, Lupe Ontiveros.

Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (Younger than 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian.)