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good back-story, and good acting

best movie i've ever seen.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I've seen this movie a couple of times and I really like it.. And I think they cast the right people for this film.. Alexa Penavega does a good job at playing the airhead and there's just something mesmerizing about Camilla Belle's performance that you just can't take your eyes of her.. Big thumbs up

Ostensibly a modern retelling of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility", the sisters Nora Dominguez (Camilla Belle) and Mary Dominguez (Alex Vega) are now rich Latinas who grew up rich and ignorant of their culture. When they lose their father and their fortune, they are forced to live with their poor relatives in East L.A.Jane Austen doesn't always translate completely to modern times. Marriage just doesn't have the same importance as in Jane's times. The culture has changed in 200 years. But if we take the story without the Austen expectations, it works relatively fine. However not everything is as fine as others. Mary is a little too privileged and ignorant to be likable for my taste. Alex Vega is playing her too much like a stereotype. And the production value is a little bit limited. With good actors available, they needed a more experienced director. Angel Gracia could only give us a made-for-TV level of style. Overall this rom-com is much richer of a story than most. It is definitely better than most of Lifetime or Hallmark romance.

I note some comments mentioning this as an adaptation of a Jane Austin. For me that author is way to heavy, but there are light adaptations that make for stories that I can accept as okay fun.If it is an adaptation, it is not a heavy, difficult to get through, sort of story. I find this to be a story to enjoy.If I had to look for a message I would likely get it wrong, but the title, Sense And Sensibility, does remind me of how impossible good sense is these days, of how sense and sensibility are central factors re how to face reality, yet somehow impossible at the same time. If I go no further than that in deep meaning I also note that this is a happy ending story. Reality not appearing to be so well geared to happy endings, see opera as stories re that, I do prefer my fiction to be an escape from that aspect of reality and From Prada To Nada says it all while having a happy ending.I find the background music to be a really fun part of the 'get away from it all' aspect. The first time that I tried to identify the Latin American type songs in a feature, it was something like Mary Kate and Ashley's television competition story, I did not get very far. This East L.A. story is plastered with such music and it is nice and fitting to the story and oh so easy to identify.Soon after I started watching my Blu-ray of this I purchased a DVD of Walkout (2006), a story about a historic aspect of East L.A., an actress called Alexa Vega in the lead. That has more difficult to identify music, including a couple of songs that were around East L.A. during 1968. But the main song is Om Hraum Mitraya by Deva Premal, which I had thought to be eastern Buddhist but is identified in a DVD commentary as Aztec, a more recent interpretation but still extremely fitting. It is used at the start and at the end, the ending it goes on for around ten minutes. Really right.

I saw the trailer on this movie while watching another movie and made a point to see it. I was disappointed in what could have been a great story line turn out to be cheesy.Possible Spoiler: There were a handful of points in the movie that I found myself asking, what? For instance, I couldn't figure out why the illegitimate brother was able to live in the house and remodel it as opposed to the bank taking it back for bankruptcy debt. Or, how the youngest could still afford college? Or how the oldest had possibly not finished college but had her pick of jobs as an attorney.I loved the idea although of it being a film about the Hispanic culture and an inside view of the barrio. There was a sense of community and culture in the film that I loved. I think we need more films by Hispanic producers, writers and actors.