Mambo the Night Away

The Mambo Kings is the superlative, long-awaited film of Oscar Hijuelos' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. It is an incandescent film about Cuban culture, the immigrant experience and a special period of American history.

In the early 50s, Cesar and Nestor Castillo (Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas), two Cuban brothers, arrive in New York dreaming of success as musicians. America finds itself in the midst of the mambo craze, and the Castillos intend to be part of it.

Cesar Castillo emerges as the extroverted half of the pair, while Nestor plays the shy musician with a suitcase full of boleros.

The brothers, working by day at a meatpacking plant, form a dance orchestra called the Mambo Kings. They begin to achieve success, culminating with a lively appearance on the I Love Lucy show.

The film moves to two different rhythms. The first half is a mambo--kinetic, ribald, dazzling. The brothers' heads spin with the newness and excitement of America. Director Arne Glimcher takes us inside the Palladium, the greatest dance hall of the day, which he recreates with electrifying, tactile wealth of detail.

In its second half, the movie changes course, drifting into a bolero that uses softer, lusher overtones. Together, Glimcher and his cast reveal the human and tragic qualities of the characters.

This second half, as well as the ending, might be considered oversentimental. However, the sentimentality is integral to the bolero, and as such is perfectly appropriate.

The movie sheds all the novel's trappings of despair and failure. Instead, the film concentrates on what inspired the book in the first place--the music.

And what glorious music! Glimcher gathered a dream cast for his soundtrack. The performances in the movie--by Linda Rondstadt, Benny More and the legendary Tito Puente and Celia Cruz--are absolute showstoppers.

Throughout it all, we get the pleasure of Armand Assante's extraordinary performance as Cesar Castillo. He is Don Juan with a motor, blessed with a sense of humor and self-irony, as well as with compulsive cavalierness, Assante never fails to be riveting. He takes over the movie and sends it sky-high.

Making his English-language film debut, Antonio Banderas (of Almodovar and Truth or Dare fame), delivers a marvelous performance as Nestor Castillo.

Banderas and Assante make a spectacular team. They are eminently credible as brothers, and along with the rest of the cast (which includes Cathy Moriarty and Maruschka Detmers), surpass Hijuelos' original creations.

We wish Glimcher had given us more music, and performers like Desi Arnaz, Jr. (playing his father) are sometimes bland, but the film remains an extraordinary, agile piece of work. It is a positive and sensitive portrayal of the immigrant Cuban culture, and the music reigns supreme throughout. This movie, as Celia Cruz would say, is pure "Azucar!"