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Under the Same Moon
Directed by Patricia Riggen
Written by Ligiah Villalobos
Starring Adrian Alonso, Kate del Castillo and Eugenio Derbez
Classification: PG

Rosario is an illegal immigrant working two cleaning jobs in Los Angeles, scraping together money to hire an immigration lawyer. Saint that she is, Rosario also manages to send home to Mexico $300 a month for her nine-year-old son, Carlitos.

And every Sunday, come 10 a.m., she calls home on a public phone to check on the little guy. “Do you need anything?” Rosario asks early on in Under the Same Moon. Carlitos's lower lip trembles. “You, Mama,” he finally sobs. Rosario bursts into tears. She wants her baby back.

We want her to have Carlitos too. So, clearly, does the movie, although Under the Same Moon sure puts us through the wringer before delivering its inevitable mother-and-child reunion. First, Carlitos's grandmother dies, sending the frightened child scrambling to America in search of his mama. Next thing we know, Carlitos is suffocating, hidden in a car seized by border police. Later, he falls in with a colourful gang of mariachi players before finding work harvesting tomatoes with migrant workers.

All this while growling American immigration agents nip at his heels. But it's only when Carlitos is adopted by a gruff, seemingly child-resistant loner, Enrique (Eugenio Derbez), that it becomes apparent that Under the Same Moon is, in many ways, a remake of a Disney lost-pet movie.

Sarcastic, put-upon Enrique, is a stand-in for the curmudgeonly woolly mammoth (Ray Romano) in Ice Age, or the snooty, ultimately helpful kitty cat (Sally Field) in The Incredible Journey – cantankerous animals who guide a frisky young critter home.

If Under the Same Moon is formula melodrama, the film is well acted and its lead character perceptively drawn. Except for the tearful phone conversation, Carlitos (Adrian Alonso) is cheerfully indifferent to his unhappy plight. His incredible journey is simply a matter of everyday survival, a circumstance that makes everything he goes through more poignant.

Other characters are less credible. Rosario (Kate del Castillo) doesn't drink or date, spending all her spare time fretting about her son. She isn't a living, breathing character as much as a Sympathetic Figure calculated to mollify those who might question Under the Same Moon's pro-immigration agenda.

For the same reason, the film offers up a villain that no one will recognize as American. A mean, British-y dowager, upset by Rosario's obvious youth and vitality, fires the cleaning woman, and then delights in her untenable situation as an illegal, underemployed immigrant. The woman serves no dramatic purpose, except to suggest that those who resist greater freedom in U.S. immigration are un-American and, worse still, fuddy-duddies.

Aside from a few scenes spent preaching to the choir, Mexican-born director Patricia Riggen does an efficient job adapting the film's racing Disney-adventure plot to the hot-button cause of illegal immigration. Her film surprises us more than once with sharp, unexpected sequences that illuminate Carlitos's aching dream to be reunited with his mother – like the scene where he surprises his estranged father, who works in an electronics store. The father takes Carlitos to a restaurant. When the bill comes, Carlitos snatches it away. The meal is on him, the nine-year-old proclaims. The older man looks on, mystified. But we understand: Little Carlitos is in a hurry to escape childhood so he might finally be in a position to look after his mother.

Special to The Globe and Mail