STAR MAPS (36)

Directed by: Miguel Arteta

Starring: Douglas Spain, Efrain Figueroa, Kandeyce Jorden

The Pitch: A Mexican teenager in Los Angeles dreams of becoming a movie star, even as he works as a prostitute in a rent-boy ring organised by his unscrupulous father.

Theo Sez: There's a fine line between characters being multi-faceted (neither Good nor Bad, everyone with their reasons and so on) and just being incoherent - and this muddled drama, which looks for a while like it might belong in the former camp, ends up firmly in the latter. Its account of trying to make it in Hollywood is obviously deeply-felt, possibly autobiographical (it's significant that the final credits list every single one of the extras, even the ones who barely appear - you get the feeling Arteta knows what it's like to be pathetically grateful for any mention, however small) ; unfortunately it's not remotely convincing, from its coincidence-riddled plot (the soap-opera queen whose producer-husband just happens to see her with our hero, prompting him to quit his job in disgust so a new producer takes over who just happens to be pals with the villainous father etc etc) to its characters of shreds and patches, stranded in a no-man's-land between gritty social realism and gratuitously weird behaviour. Some of the latter - the bizarre brother who parades round the house in a wrestler's outfit, or the security guard who borrows our heroine's cigarette for a grateful puff before letting her in - is mildly diverting, but, even before it falls apart completely at the end, it's not much of a movie. You might point out that, as a tale of Latino immigrants struggling in the city, it's spikier and more colourful than MY FAMILY and THE PEREZ FAMILY put together ; then again, that's really nothing to brag about.