Reviewed by Alicia Glass
Director: Teresa Suarez
Review Rating: 7.5
Two young country-bumpkin maids steal some fancy clothes from their snooty employer to attend a wedding, setting off a chain reaction adventure that affects the love lives of all around them!
So Martina (Gina Vargas) and Lupita (Olinka Velazquez) are underpaid and overworked maids, slaving for Marcela (Erika de la Rosa) and her husband. The maids are allowed to live in Marcela’s fancy house, surrounded by luxury, while they live in utter penury with dreams of riches and love, always love. Marcela’s best friend, Marifer (Mar Contreras), is blissfully unaware that hey, her best friend is sleeping with her husband Santiago (Mark Tacher), while verbally taking her own husband down a peg or three and virtually ignoring her son. Marcela’s own husband declaims about his lack of getting laid, in song, in his underwear! And Marcela is such a high-nosed bitch that she informs her maids that no, they don’t get time off for a wedding out in the country, find her fancy Chanel shirt that went missing! Only the maids are aware that, well, Martina ruined the shirt. But Martina’s love interest out in the country is waiting for her! Pepe (Victor Garcia) loves Martina so very much, that of course when she tearfully phones him to say she won’t be able to make the wedding, he bursts into song! And the maids collectively decide, hell with it – borrow a bunch of the Mistresses’ clothes and gems and go to that wedding in the country in style!
But Marcela isn’t about to take this lying down. Conscripting her best friend Marifer, after a song and dance musical in the beauty parlor, Marcela is determined to find out the names, which she didn’t even know, and locations of her errant thieving maids and get her things back. But this involves kidnapping another maid who happens to know our pair and where they’re supposed to be this weekend, sleeping in strange fleabag motels, and in general being around a lifestyle to which Marcela is less than accustomed. Marifer is already beginning to suspect something is going on between Santiago and Marcela, manages to confirm her worst suspicions, and sets off another chain of unexpected reactions between the supposed best friends, both their husbands, and their poor children. Meanwhile, our maids Martina and Lupita have been off having the time of their lives in bright borrowed clothes at a friends wedding, dreaming of the day they’ll both be wed, but especially Martina dreams of being the wife of penniless Pepe! Getting hauled out of the church during the service by Marcela and Marifer puts our errant maids in a very bad light, but after observing the utter selfishness and conceit and deceit of Marcela, Marifer finds the courage to take back control of her entire life, in song!
Don’t worry, it all works out in the end. For most of the characters anyway. And for those that didn’t, they have just desserts coming anyway. The entire film is littered with joyous song and dance numbers, lamenting or touting the various ecstasies and sorrows of life. The style of musical dramedy is very Bollywood, but with a decidedly Latino slant – the girls in their country-girl blouses, bright skirts and matching waving kerchiefs; the men in Mariachi-style suits with the ubiquitous cowboy boots, stomping their way in circles as they sing; and the solos by famous singers, both male and female, that can take the top of your head off! A good deal of the music of the film was brought in by famous Mexican singer and songwriter Juan Gabriel. He even has a cameo for the final song of the film!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6-uYWYr5Ok]