An appeal to ethnic pride and to very little else -- especially to anything much in the aesthetic realm. The fact-based story of Pedro J. Gonzalez, Mexican-born balladeer on L.A. radio in the Thirties, who began to use his platform to flex some political muscle and was promptly framed for statutory rape, is the first narrative film by documentarist Isaac Artenstein (In the Name of the People, for one). Even here Artenstein thinks more in terms of bald information than dramatization, and he isn't going to worry about it, for example, if his dips into badly-matched archival footage give sensitive viewers the bends. He is perhaps understandably a little awkward with actors (or they with him), and not just the Anglos who've been enlisted for their resemblance to puercos. The dialogues between them have all the vitality of dried fruit. With Oscar Chavez, Maria Rojo, and Tony Plana. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd
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