Welcome ‘Princess’ Explores Love and Cultural Awareness

Awkward title aside, tonight’s “The Princess and the Barrio Boy” is an engagingShowtime family film whose chief asset is its core of characters: articulate, well-heeled and upper-crust Latinos.

Instead of calling attention to this rare and welcome prime-time sighting, writer Julie Chambers and first-time director Tony Plana place the emphasis of their genial coming-of-age story on romance and cultural awareness.

The central figures are Sirena (Marisol Nichols), a spoiled, sheltered teen who’s never used the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and Sol (Nicholas Gonzalez), a cool, confident East Los Angeles athlete who’s joined her on their high school swim team.

In spite of their wide social gap, the couple’s chemistry is believable. After getting to know each other, the cautious Sirena catches a bus to Boyle Heights, where she meets Sol’s warm, gracious family, including his generous father (played by Plana), and devours a grand Mexican feast. Alas, it’s a sequence that strains credibility. After all, how many young Mexican American women, regardless of wealth or social standing, have never tasted a tamale?

Meanwhile, Sirena’s widowed, self-made father (Edward James Olmos), who “never looked back” after working hard to leave his East L.A. upbringing, plans to marry Minerva (Maria Conchita Alonso), a snobbish, self-absorbed gold-digger who couldn’t care less about little rich girl Sirena and her precocious younger brother (Michael Reardon).

At its most likable when focusing on Sirena and her blossoming romance with Sol, the film falters when showing its cartoonish side, which is personified by Sirena’s two shallow, superficial friends and Minerva’s excitable wedding planner (Pauly Shore, who unwisely channels Martin Short in his equally over-the-top performance in Steve Martin’s “Father of the Bride”).

But these are relatively small nuisances for an otherwise pleasant production fronted by the steady performances of Nichols, Gonzalez, Olmos and Alonso, who revels in her bad-girl role.

Director Plana, who plays the patriarch in Showtime’s “Resurrection Blvd.,” gives the film a strong sense of family unity, though he resorts to some silly slapstick in the waning moments.

“Princess” is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” the link being Sirena’s love of the ocean and her ability to swim. As it is, the film manages to remain afloat in spite of its flaws.

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* “The Princess and the Barrio Boy” airs tonight at 8 on Showtime. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).