James L. Brooks Can't See It

James L. Brooks' Spanglish suffered from a remarkably off-putting imbalance of sympathetic characters. Tea Leoni's type A housewife comes off as so remarkable unsympathetic compared to everyone else in the film that the film does not earn the feelings it think it does. This is crystallized in Brooks' commentary for the DVD of the film. The clearest example comes during the scene when Leoni's character takes her Mexican maid's daughter to get her hair highlighted (something the mother would never want done). Brooks explains that he found it surprising that not a single person who saw the film has considered what Leoni's character does anything other than a horrifying betrayal. He says audiences never see the other side of the issue. Never once does he consider that it is his fault as a writer and an editor that the audience has no desire to sympathize with her - and it is most assuredly his fault. I adore Brooks. He is a gifted writer and director (for both movies and television), but this film needed more time to gestate. Still, it makes for a fascinating commentary track - a perfect moment of a director unable to admit to himself that he fell short of his high ambitions.