Reviews

Look, this isn't "Schindler's List." Don't expect cinematic, dramatic grandeur; this is light, sunny and sandy family-friendly fare that thoroughly thrilled our young ones and kept the adults sufficiently amused. Sometimes, especially as the weather warms for the summer months, that's really all any of us need.

If you can accept it as that, without expecting more from it than what it is, you will enjoy it.

Also enjoyable: seeing Steve Sanders back on the beach, especially those of Malibu, just like in those "Beverly Hills: 90210" days. Ziering plays the role well and feels like such a natural by the water. Watch it if for Ziering alone!

Mexican soap operas in general have a tendency to be excessively melodramatic and tedious, but this one takes the cake. It only recently starting airing and already I can't stand it. Today's episode in particular annoyed me so much I felt compelled to write a scathing review and hopefully prevent any other unsuspecting viewers from wasting their time.

The basic plot follows the story of two families, one comfortably settled, the Elizondo's, and another, the Reyes, fighting to regain what they believe to have once been theirs. The Elizondo sisters are controlled by a diabolical mother and evil son-in-law; they battle daily to defend their love for the Reyes brothers, who pursued their affections initially for less than honorable reasons but who come to genuinely care for the Elizondo women. The story is set in a small Mexican town, where rural values reign and lawlessness prevails.

On paper this sounds interesting enough, but a promising concept quickly sours when the dialogue fizzles, the characters are developed like caricatures rather than believable people, and the situations which fuel the plot become increasingly more and more outrageously ridiculous.

To add to the increasing stupidity of the story, and perhaps a reason why it was destined to fail from the beginning, the actors, while decent at what they do, are horribly cast, if only because they are very visibly NOT even REMOTELY close in age to the age of their characters. Not that that's necessarily an insurmountable problem, and can at times be successfully overcome, but in this case it remains only a basic symptom of this production's many, many, MANY shortcomings.

Don't even bother tuning in, it's not worth wasting an hour of your day.