Well, this is an odd duck of a motion picture. Writer/director Luis Valdez appears to have adapted his play for the screen by not technically adapting it at all. For the most part, Zoot Suit is like training a camera on a stage play, complete with live theater sets and choreography. Occasionally, he takes another step back and has the movie viewer see an audience watching an actual play, but there's never any much aim to that. There are some songs here but not enough to truly make this a musical. The story is simplistic and halting, filled with two-dimensional characters and one-dimensional dialog that's peppered with enough slang and Spanish so that you've really got to pay attention to follow what's going on. It's also preachy and more preoccupied with being socially conscious than entertaining.The point of this film is to give people a look at what it was like to be Latino in 1940s Los Angeles. It does that by following Henry Reyna (Daniel Valdez), a young gang leader as he and his friends are prosecuted for a murder they didn't commit. Henry and his friends, though, aren't the sort of gang bangers you see today. They were "zoot suiters", wrapping themselves up in high-waisted pants, long jackets, big brim hats, long chain loops that hand down their sides and switchblades in their back pockets. Trailing after Henry through all his experiences is El Pachuco (Edward James Olmos), who is some poorly thought out mix of imaginary friend, alter ego and narrator of the play.I could go into Henry's trial, his virginal girlfriend, the union organizer who spearheads his appeal and other stuff, but that's not really what Zoot Suit is about. It's about the racism faced by Latinos in 1940s America as they tried to claim their piece of the American Dream and how they sometimes internalized that prejudice. The tale of Henry Reyna is just a pretext for a lot of shorthand pontificating about that, but this movie is neither smart nor serious enough to say anything interesting on those subjects, especially not with Edward James Olmos strutting through the film like a bad guy from the 1960s Batman TV show.It's weird construction aside, Zoot Suit isn't terribly performed. However, it's overwhelming sense of unreality is alienating and there's not enough fun here to counteract that. If you watch it, you'll understand what writer/director Valdez is trying to say and wonder why he chose such a strange way of expressing it.

This movie's best feature is that it is a perfect "opening up" of a play, just enough to be cinematically compelling, but never leaving the stage behind. It was done so well that the artfulness of the storytelling almost made me forget about the evasiveness of the story being told. I kept looking for reasons to like this, until the cop out ending made me wonder if there had been a single moment of historic or sociological truth in the previous 100 minutes.It would have been perfectly sensible to end the story with an honest and factual recitation of the subsequent crimes committed by the men who had been falsely accused and abused by the legal system. It was perfectly bizarre for Valdez to invent "let's pretend" destinies for the defendants, full of success and happiness. Am I supposed to be amused by this phony rewriting of reality? The very real evil of American soldiers, journalists and judges is laid bare, but the evil crimes of Mexican-American gang members are self-righteously minimized and sidestepped. In its trivializing of gang violence this play/film is a perfect illustration of the phoniness of Mexican-American pride. The Big Message is that double-talk and rationalizations of violence within "Chicano" communities is perfectly acceptable, so long as you can point your finger at systemic Establishment (read "White") racism. I guess that's the true nature of El Pachuco, then and now: swaggering BS.With some self-reflective honesty this could have been a worthwhile phantasmagoria of fashion, music, ethnicity, crime and injustice. Instead Valdez squandered his talents on dishonest propaganda.

Simply stated, a great stage play, on film, complete with audience, on film. Olmos is very good,yes,yes. Tyne Daly? Interesting casting choice, not a bad one; it was 1981 after all. Yet I keep asking myself (and of course those darlings at the MPAA) "WHY IS THIS FILM RATED R?" WHY!!!!??? (really, why?) Spanish swearing? 2 naked male actors in fetal positions? A reference to W.R. Hearst? Come on! Make sure to see THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED for the skinny on the MPAA. But seriously folks, WHY is it rated R? LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD is rated PG 13 because they only say F&&K twice- three times makes it R - Jeez, go figure! I saw nothing blew up in this film, I did see some under pants on the female dancers but those were tap pants and not close up....

This film is a work of art. Of the finest quality. I first saw it at the Sunset Theater in downtown Los Angeles over 20 years ago. I was impressed with it then. Now that I have my own copy, I continue to be impressed by the quality of the performances, the screen writing, the sets, the music and dancing, and the feeling. I gave it a "10" which puts me in the same category as the "under 18 age females", OK, I guess I don't mind being in a group with some under 18 age females, sounds pretty good, eh, ese? Kudos for Luis Valdez, Daniel Valdez, Edward James Olmos, Tyne Daly and muchos otros. Great work, can't say enough good things about it.