The "big joke" in "From Prada to Nada" is that two spoilt rich girls, Nora Dominguez (Camilla Belle) and Mary Dominguez (Alex Vega) are, owing to a sequence of events (too boring to discuss), forced to abandon their upper class lifestyle for a working class lifestyle in a Mexican community in southern Los Angeles. This premise might have been turned into a successful comedy, if the Mexican characters were made into more intelligent people and if the dialogue was sharp and witty. Unfortunately, this film falls way below that standard. There is not a single joke in this movie that works.
I also suspect that the makers of this movie gave up on the jokes about midway and decided to hedge their bets with a clumsy soap opera to encourage some viewers to pull out their kleenexes. But you won't need kleenexes for "From Prada to Nada," because this film is essentially a long catalogue of boring clichés and stereotypes. The Mexican women are all fat and superstitious and consume lots of fatty food. The Mexican men rarely shave, wear sweaty t-shirts that have not seen a washing machine for weeks, and spend all day repairing cars. The romances in this film are clichés which you can predict before they unfold. Nora Dominguez and Edward Ferris (Nicholas D'Agosto) are two good natured nerds who work at the same law firm and fall in love. They live happily ever after. No secret there. Mary Dominguez falls for the rich stud, a Mexican teaching assistant named Rodrigo Fuentes (Kuno Becker). But we know there is something very wrong with Rodrigo -- he is either cheating on Mary or married to another woman -- because Mary is supposed to fall in love with the nice Mexican boy named Bruno (played by Wilmer Valderrama of the "70s Show" fame) who repairs cars and paints graffiti on the walls. Perhaps these clichés would not have been so irksome, if the characters in this movie were at least interesting. "Leap Year" was a predictable movie, but that did not seem to matter when you saw Matthew Goode and Amy Adams performing so well together. But unfortunately for "From Prada to Nada" no one at the screenplay level, to the direction, to the production put much effort in creating interesting characters and making this film succeed as a comedy or a romantic picture. Thumbs way down. 3.4/10
I also suspect that the makers of this movie gave up on the jokes about midway and decided to hedge their bets with a clumsy soap opera to encourage some viewers to pull out their kleenexes. But you won't need kleenexes for "From Prada to Nada," because this film is essentially a long catalogue of boring clichés and stereotypes. The Mexican women are all fat and superstitious and consume lots of fatty food. The Mexican men rarely shave, wear sweaty t-shirts that have not seen a washing machine for weeks, and spend all day repairing cars. The romances in this film are clichés which you can predict before they unfold. Nora Dominguez and Edward Ferris (Nicholas D'Agosto) are two good natured nerds who work at the same law firm and fall in love. They live happily ever after. No secret there. Mary Dominguez falls for the rich stud, a Mexican teaching assistant named Rodrigo Fuentes (Kuno Becker). But we know there is something very wrong with Rodrigo -- he is either cheating on Mary or married to another woman -- because Mary is supposed to fall in love with the nice Mexican boy named Bruno (played by Wilmer Valderrama of the "70s Show" fame) who repairs cars and paints graffiti on the walls. Perhaps these clichés would not have been so irksome, if the characters in this movie were at least interesting. "Leap Year" was a predictable movie, but that did not seem to matter when you saw Matthew Goode and Amy Adams performing so well together. But unfortunately for "From Prada to Nada" no one at the screenplay level, to the direction, to the production put much effort in creating interesting characters and making this film succeed as a comedy or a romantic picture. Thumbs way down. 3.4/10