McCaleb Burnett and Elika Portnoy star in the latest box-office flop,“Immigration Tango” alongside Carlos Leon and Ashley Wolfe. | Courtesy of Mutressa Movies.
Immigration Tango is a romantic comedy set in Miami, Fla., where an illegal-alien couple asks another American couple to switch partners and marry them so as to avoid deportation. As if the men agreeing to this partner swap wasn’t already a bad idea, the men begin to fall in love with the other’s girlfriend — and predictably so.
As if this kind of dramatic irony wasn’t already overplayed, there is an INS agent who catches on and checks in on the validity of the marriages.
At this point, you might be wondering why you’ve never heard of “Immigration Tango” before. It is probably because there have only been about four commercials total aired advertising this movie, and for good reason.
Movies such as this one display how low the standards must be to become a screenwriter, and the fact that a movie of this quality took four writers working together to fail so miserably is unbelievable.
The plot was a recycled version of “The Proposal” with Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock, with a Latin twist. Much of the movie was more of an overdone travel commercial for the city of Miami.
The story is flawed from the start. The problems begin when a Russian immigrant Elena’s (Elika Portnoy) student visa is about to expire while she’s living with her Columbian boyfriend Carlos (Carlos Leon) on his boat. She must find a job or try to find an American man willing to be married to her for two years and run the risk of being charged with a felony if ever discovered.
The rest of the film is full of lazily written scenes that endlessly swing and miss every potential bit of humor.
Soon after the switch — which was understood as a platonic agreement — is made, Ashley Wolfe’s character, Betty, oversteps the boundaries of the strictly platonic living agreement she has with Carlos.
As the movie comes to an end, the plot takes a turn, which was more like a half-hearted attempt to add shock value to the story — however, this swing-and-miss plot twist almost defeats the entire purpose of the film as a whole.
No matter how unoriginal the plot may be, it holds no candle to how excruciatingly painful it is to watch these b-string actors utter predictable punch lines and awful stereotype phrases.
After watching this monstrosity unfold for an hour-and-a-half — though it seemed like an eternity — the movie finally comes to a very cheap ending.
A few things are apparent: the directing was terrible, the writing was unforgivable and the acting was a joke. Then again, it would be ridiculous to expect something groundbreaking from an actor like Carlos Leon, whose last major role was Henchman-B in “The Big Lebowski.”
Keep your eyes peeled for “Immigration Tango” in the $1 bin in gas stations, along with every other movie whose sole purpose is to promote Miami on an extremely low budget. And for those of you who are thinking about making this movie a part of your next date, you should probably save your $9 for something that will at least be worth it in the end.
