Carlita's Secret

The only positive thing i can say about this movie is that eva longoria is easy on the eyes. I hate to judge without viewing in entirely, but it was very difficult to watch. Scenes were predictable, and acting was bad. Looked like something my college buddies and i filmed on spring break.

Don't get me wrong. I love independent films. But that is not what this was.

This was a travesty of film-making. The director must have quit halfway through the film.

Here's my biggest beef with this "movie". THE MUSIC. Did the producers owe a debt to some local rappers because the soundtrack is so bad that it's actually funny. Whether the scene is sad or serious or funny, it's the same horrible rap music.

The plot is ridiculous, the set design was non-existent, the dialogue was enough to put a baby to sleep. They literally walked out of jail with not so much as a chase scene. Horrible.

If Eva Longoria wasn't in this monstrosity and my curiosity to see her wasn't prickled, they would give copies of this away at the local shooting range for target practice.

Horrible. I gave it a two only because of Eva.

Usually when you see a video / DVD cover with a picture of a well-known star but a title that you don't recognize, it's a movie made early in their careers before they got famous which gets re-released to capitalize on their current fame, even if sometimes they only play a small part in it. Well, at least in the case of "Carlita's Secret" the cover doesn't lie: Eva Longoria IS the main star of this movie. The script (co-written by three people who have barely worked on anything else) is a complete mess (lamest part: after being witness to a club shootout at a club that results in a cop's death, Carlita (Longoria) changes her name and after a few years no one recognizes her, despite the facts that she looks EXACTLY the same, and she even works as a dancer at the same club!), most of the male characters can barely complete a sentence without the word "f**k" in one of its variations, and what little action there is is amateurish at best, but the film does tick off many of the right Eva Longoria boxes: she dances seductively, she kisses another woman, she wears a bikini, she fires a gun, etc. Plus, her co-star Alejandra Gutierrez (a Playboy Playmate) is a total knockout as well. So not all is lost. ** out of 4.

It might interest you to know that we're privy to the filmmakers who created this piece:

First of all their composer--if you can call him that--wrote the music under the influence of drugs, so that's why you hear the same loop--which is what the producers wanted to use. What do you expect of penny-pinching white trash from Miami? These jokers get into the business to make a buck on you using canned stories and cheap sweatshop labor. They don't care about the quality at all--it's all about the bottom line.

We happen to know from some LA sources that the reason this movie was botched from the beginning is 1) they had no money to pay professionals properly, 2) the had no idea how to make a movie in post. The director was hampered from the beginning by scenes that had to be cut because execs at the company were flying around the country taking 5-martini lunches.

Secondly, the director shot only 60 pages of a 90 page script, but the producers wanted to the project to exceed 90 minutes. It came up short at 71 minutes--so the editors had to find all kinds of doubled up shots from other noble films like Miami Tail and Race Exploitation Whatnot to extend this wondrous vehicle for Eva Longoria.

I saw the movie and spoke to one of the cast members here in LA.

It could have been a five star movie if the producer and executive producers would have allowed the director to fully shoot and edit the film as he had envisioned it.

The original script was very week when it was given to the director. But the director made it work even though the producers forced him to cut pages and shoot important scenes under an hour. I think all cast members including the director did an outstanding job under the strenuous environment that all had to go through.

I was informed by a cast member that the director also functioned as the director of photography for the first week of production and did all the hand-held camera work for the entire film and there is evidence to prove it and yet the producers neglected to give the director co-DP and/or camera operator credit on the final release film. This cast member also told me that the director was willing to edit the film at no cost to the production company but the producers denied him the privilege to edit his film.

Also, the use of fowl language gangster rap music in a Latino film especially over well acted dialogue scenes between Eva Longoria and Maria Bravo is of poor taste from the producers and this definitely killed the movie for me. Carlita's Secret was fun to watch and it showed talent in the director and actors. Can't wait to see the director's next movie.