How The Gringo Stole Christmas

“At the North Pole they have little helpers who do all the work. In Los Angeles they’re called Mexicans,” says Claudia (Emily Tosta). It’s a joke, delivered during the opening scenes of Angel Gracia’s Christmas romcom, but it sums up the mood of life in a place with significant racial tensions. Gracia explores that tension with a light touch, having fun with stereotypes and the ridiculousness of many attendant beliefs.

Claudia works far away from her family, partly because she didn’t want to pass up a career opportunity but partly, one suspects, because her doting father Bennie (George Lopez) just wasn’t giving her any space. To him, she’s still the little girl in the numerous family photos scattered around his home. There’s a new man in her life, however – mild-mannered white guy Lief (Jack Kilmer). When she takes him to Los Angeles to join her family Christmas, chaos ensues.

A little chaos, anyway. Nothing gets too ugly here and everybody is fundamentally a nice person, despite the ups and downs familiar to the format. There’s the requisite amount of wacky humour but it’s played quite gently, with the emphasis on character. Though we don’t get to know everybody very well, they work as an ensemble, creating a believable family dynamic – chihuahua included. We also see something of the wider community in the neighbourhood, including three guys who live in their car just across the street and together pack in as many Mexican stereotypes as possible, written and played affectionately by insiders.

Although the film does eventually address them here, there are a few uncomfortable issues in the film, principally in the way that both men tend to treat Claudia like property. Her female relatives consider Lief to be a sweet boy but viewers may spot some red flags. That said, whilst the romance between them is obviously important, it’s really the relationship between Lief and Bennie which forms the core of the film. Lief has to learn to be himself rather that accommodating others to the point where they can’t really get to know him, whilst Bennie needs to expand his definition of family and stop trying to have everything his way.

It’s tricky to walk the line that Gracia has chosen between seriousness and silliness, but for the most part this is well managed, thanks in part to the use of small, absurdist touches like the green and red tinsel fragments which blow around during the film’s biggest confrontation, standing in for the snow we would expect in a Hollywood Christmas film. Overall, the whole thing is rather forgettable, but if you’re looking for a festive film with humour and heart which doesn’t stray over into excess sentiment, you could do a lot worse.