Los dos Mundos de Angelita

My review was written in October 1983 after a Midtown Manhattan screening.

"The Two Worlds of Angelita" is an earnest but uninvolving low-budget film depicting the problems of an average Puerto Rican family moving to New York City and trying to cope with a new environment. By scrupulously avoiding the usual elements of popular Latin cinema (comedy, sex, glamor, violence), Gotham-based filmmaker Jane Morrison has come up with a dull picture of very limited commercial interest.

Marien Perez Riera toplines as the nine-year-old Angelita, a bright child who has trouble making friends when she and her mom Fela (Rosalba Rolon) move to New York to join her "papi" Chuito (Angel Domenech Soto). Big stumbling block for both daughter and dad proves to be inadequate knowledge of English, hurting Angelita at school and preventing Chuito from landing a good job.

Weak storyline broadcasts all the film's main themes on the surface, with little diversion or development. After mainly chatty scenes with neighbors and relatives, pic ends abruptly with Angelita's blank expression when her dad literally takes a hike to join a training program in Connecticut.

There are knowing verbal references to popular entertainment here, as Angelita play-acts tv soap operas with her favorite doll or makes a comparison to tv bomba Iris Chacon. Other than some invigorating hits by Salsa star Willie Colon, "Angelita" lacks a popular link to its potential audience. Tech credits, including resonating direct-sound recording, are just adequate.

As an independent filmmaker, with a firm grasp on the social/political issues that her work is based on, Ms. Morrison is able to capture the complicated nature of the cultural assimilation various U.S. immigrants must undergo.

In spite of the low budget this film was made on, the director and crew of this movie have done an excellent job with this movie. Having been directed by a talented woman who had clearly grasped the complicated nature of cultural transition.

While Morrison lost her life to a fierce case of Malaria (while attending a film festival in Nairobi, Kenya in the late 1980s), her work in New York, Puerto Rico & Nairobi remains especially poignant in the world today.

MPAA Rating: R

My Rating: 12 and up

My * Rating: 5.5

The Two Worlds of Angelita was so short, it barely got the point across. I saw it in a specialty movie theater, on a school trip and I was estatic to go, as it was my first spanish trip this year. Well, I shouldn't have been. The film had barely any structure and it keeps on repeating itself over and over without getting any further. They could edit it and make it an one hour, two part mini series. Or just burn all but one of the prints. No wonder this little film has no one to put it on video or DVD. Leave A children's picture book as a childrens movie. Don't try to make it a movie for teenagers.

Covers 10 year old Angelita's last few days in Puerto Rico and first few months in New York's East Harlem as well as some of the conflicts among her family, their friends and the local kids.

Well done considering the budget and the apparently amateur actors do quite well. The ending has that 'here is where the money ran out' look.

By current standards the film would probably get a G rating. However, it seemingly would not have much appeal for really young children.