Movie Review - 'Under the Same Moon'

Under the Same Moon

Starring Adrian Alonso, Kate del Castillo and Eugenio Derbez
Directed by Patricia Riggen
Rated PG-13

Very often, we remember the movies that are wildly innovative, the films that are packed with eye-popping visuals or trick endings. Less is made of the movies that, ironically, do less. If a motion picture doesn’t have a “wow” moment, we have a tendency to relegate it to the back of our minds with all the other answers to the eternal question, “What was the name of that one movie?”

Under the Same Moon doesn’t have splashy effects or a serpentine story. In fact, it couldn’t be much simpler in its execution. But it’s the most affecting movie of the first few months of 2008, one with a simple and hopeful message and a tremendous amount of empathy for its characters.

A boy and his mother have been separated for years. He remains in Mexico while his mother successfully crossed the border as an illegal immigrant and works multiple jobs in Los Angeles, hoping to one day send for her son to come join her for a better life in America. 

When his grandmother dies unexpectedly, resourceful Carlitos (Adrian Alonso) begins his own journey to emigrate into the U.S. to be with the only family he has left. Throughout his travels, Carlitos encounters plenty of roadblocks you’d expect in a film dealing on some level with the topic of illegal immigration – border check, INS raids, illegals working whatever menial day jobs they can drum up – and director Patricia Riggen does a commendable job not politicizing the issue more than it already is, neither at the expense of her story nor at the risk of making a different kind of movie altogether. 

Instead, she acknowledges that illegal aliens have a very hard time and shows us those challenges through the eyes of a young, strong willed boy. It’s the right choice. Our portal into this world is nine years old; he’s not equipped to render a judgment on the things he sees over his week on the road and therefore we can’t, either.

The details of the story are a little hard to swallow, but Under the Same Moon can be a tear-jerking experience that justifies the way it manipulates an audience through a touching and comical relationship Carlitos forms with the hardscrabble Enrique (Eugenio Derbez), by finding some unexpected closure along the way, and by throwing the bulk of the film’s emotional weight on the shoulders of young Adrian Alonso, who is unconsciously good and never the least bit hammy, a rare find in a leading performance by a child actor.