American Adobo

Adobo doesn't exoticize the culture so much as leaven it with a sense of ordinariness.

Tries to cram too many ingredients into one small pot.

The film is reasonably entertaining, though it begins to drag two-thirds through, when the melodramatic aspects start to overtake the comedy.

Marinated in clichés and mawkish dialogue.

As the film loses its grip on its multiple stories, the title begins to suggest an overheated stew bubbling out of its pot. By the end of the film, the intersecting dramas and histrionic performances have spilled all over the floor, so to speak.

The movie is stiff and schmaltzy and clumsily directed.

The film's failings are only highlighted by the fact that while, occasionally, we're granted real glimpses of interior lives, largely emanating from de Leon, Davao and Picache, those lives are never given the chance to take shape.