Butler's Cinema Scene

Gilbert Saldivar, Jorge Burgos, Kimberli Flores

“SHINE”  My rating: C 

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Funded by a Kickstarter campaign and conceived as a tribute to the indigenous but threatened culture of NYC’s Spanish Harlem, “Shine” is a heart-on-its-sleeve musical melodrama that excels when it sticks to music and flounders when it goes for drama.

Unfolding in a corner of Manhattan where Puerto Rican flags outnumber Old Glory by about 5-to-1, writer/director Anthony Nardolillo’s tale centers on two brothers whose lives take diverging paths.

In a prologue we see the boys’ childhood and their training in salsa dancing by their nightclub-owning, band-leading father (David Zayas). The two grow into accomplished dancers, strutting their stuff like Latino John Travoltas.

But a family tragedy intervenes, and the film jumps seven years forward. One of the brothers, Ralphi (Jorge Burgos), has gone to college and now works for a big British redevelopment corporation that’s trying to get a foothold in Spanish Harlem.  He’s sent back home to do some community massaging, to win over neighborhood leaders on behalf of gentrification and to stop a series of arson attacks on the company’s properties.

His brother Junior (Gilbert Saldivar) regards his interloping sibling as a traitor.  Junior, in fact, is one of those gasoline-flinging vandals.

And, oh yeah, there’s a girl (Kimberli Flores) in the middle.

Little by little Ralph comes to realize the errors of his way.  How to save his old neighborhood?

Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!

David Mayas, Gilbert Saldivar

“Shine” (not to be confused with the 1996 Geoffrey Rush biopic about an eccentric pianist) is one of those well-meaning movies where characters talk in quotes rather than dialogue.

(“You don’t dance just because you know how to. You’ve got to feel it. It isn’t salsa if it doesn’t have flavor.”)

Moreover, its two leading men seem to have been cast more for their dancing than their acting.

The main reason to catch “Shine” is for its almost nonstop music and some high-powered dance segments.  It is in these moments of musical abandon that filmmaker Nardolillo makes his most powerful case.

| Robert W. Butler