Jessica Kiang There are several very mildly cautionary notes sounded in Sergio Navarretta’s “The Cuban,” a pleasant, plangent hybrid of culture-clash drama, odd-couple formula and late-life Bucket List bromide.
There’s the gentle exhortation not to follow someone else’s dream at the expense of your own. There’s a subtle finger-wag at ageism, at the assumption that because someone is elderly or infirm they have nothing left to give the world.
And there’s a whole lot about the healing power of music. But the real learning here ought to be that if you cast two such charismatic performers as Louis Gossett Jr.
and Shohreh Aghdashloo in your movie, it would be better to clear all the Life Lesson clutter away and just let them get on with.
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