Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

From Prada to Nada Blu-ray Movie Review

Does it make sense to adapt Austen with a Latino sensibility?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 30, 2011

If Jane Austen were alive today, she would arguably be the hottest “commodity” in Hollywood. For over 15 years now, one adaptation after another of Austen’s rather small novelistic output has reached either the small screen via television or the large screen of the multiplex, and more often than not these adaptations have been hugely popular. Though Austen first got the lavish big screen treatment as long ago as 1940’s Laurence Olivier-Greer Garson Pride and Prejudice, and then sporadically got everything from a Broadway musical (1959’s First Impressions, a flopola based on Pride and Prejudice) to a wave of BBC miniseries in the 1970s, for some reason the 1990s and beyond seemed to be prime territory for a rather overwhelming new wave of Austen adaptations. Some of these, like the iconic 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth, hewed quite closely to Austen’s original conceptions. Others, like Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, took an Austen source novel (in this case Emma) and completely reinvented it in a different setting and with a radically different tone, at least at times. While everything from Pride and Prejudice to Austen’s other “big” alliterative offering, Sense and Sensibility, have been offered up in fairly straight and narrow adaptations, there have been a number of really inventive reworkings of Austen’s novels through the years. Bride and Prejudice was a colorful Bollywood updating of Austen that seemed to fit perfectly within the confines of Austen’s sometimes rather astringent social commentary. Lost in Austen was an often hilarious British miniseries about a modern day London lass who finds herself transported back to the Bennet household and begins to wreak considerable havoc. So on the face of it, there’s certainly nothing wrong with imagining Austen in a new setting. Unfortunately a wealth of good intentions can’t save From Prada to Nada, a Latino version of Sense and Sensibility which updates the Dashwood daughters Elinore and Marianne into two Beverly Hills girls, Nora (Camilla Belle) and Mary (Alexa Vega), who must deal with the sudden death of their father and the dissolution of what they thought was their lavish inheritance.

One of the major problems with From Prada to Nada is it doesn’t know quite what to do with one of Austen’s central theses of the original Sense and Sensibility, namely the patently insane practice of 19th century British law to routinely pass property and wealth from father to son. Daughters in those days were simply expected to marry and to “extract” whatever wealth they might have from their husbands. How, then, to deal with that salient fact of Austeniana in From Prada to Nada? Unfortunately, the film never really comes up with a plausible explanation. The girls’ half-brother Gabe (Alexis Ayala), whom they never even knew existed, just kind of shows up and with his officious girlfriend Olivia (April Bowlby), simply assumes control of the girls’ Beverly Hills mansion, more or less booting them out in the process.

What then ensues is a putative “comedy” of manners as the girls go live with their Aunt in East L.A. and are suddenly thrust up against the supposedly less fortunate lifestyle of an American barrio. It goes without saying the girls, especially Rodeo Drive regular Mary, are completely freaked out by this transformation, though, as per the source novel, Nora (Elinore) is the cooler head and decides to take matters into her own hands, getting a job at a law firm which not so coincidentally puts her in the orbit of Olivia’s attorney brother Edward (Nicholas D’Agosto).

From Prada to Nada was obviously made with a target (ethnic) demographic in mind, and for that niche audience it will no doubt play a lot better than for the public at large. The film is to be commended for not exploiting too many vicious stereotypes and it does a wonderful job of portraying the close knit Latino community in East Los Angeles. But dramatically the story never really works in this new setting. It’s too fraught with coincidences and unneeded melodrama, and even worse, the comic bits really never land effectively.

Director Angel Gracia may simply have been too inexperienced to have dealt with some of the shortcomings of Craig Fernandez’s original draft screenplay, which was extensively reworked by Fina Torres and Luis Alfara. Indeed, as is discussed in one of the featurettes included on this Blu-ray, the film took a rather astounding six years of development to finally reach the screen. Surely someone should have noticed the glaring plot inconsistencies in that time, not to mention the rather sanguine way Nora especially accepts Gabe’s procurement of her father’s home in this version. The eventual romantic connections between Nora and Edward and Mary and neighborhood muralist Bruno (Wilmer Valderrama) also seem rote and completely foregone, despite a fitfully interesting subplot of Mary getting seduced by the supposed riches of one of her University professors. (That in and of itself was sort of a funny aspect of this film’s take on the original novel—who knew teachers could make enough to afford a multimillion dollar Beverly Hills mansion?).

There’s little doubt that the filmmakers as well as the cast had their collective hearts in the right place with regard to From Prada to Nada. Unfortunately good intentions aren’t enough to craft a cohesive entertainment. This film needed a lot sharper writing, more finely tuned performances and simply more innovation in adapting some of Austen’s themes to a 21st century setting to completely make the transition to a new culture and setting. The Latino sensibility in and of itself is absolutely fine, but too little in From Prada to Nada makes sense.

From Prada to Nada Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

From Prada to Nada debuts on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a generally decent enough looking transfer that's especially vibrant in terms of well saturated color. The image, while certainly sharp most of the time, harbors right at the edge of excellence a lot of the time without ever managing to ever muster that final dollop of clarity to push it into the really great arena. Fine detail is pleasing, if not overwhelming, and the film bears no trace of DNR, though there are some artificial sharpening artifacts from time to time. Occasional aliasing also hobbles this transfer, though it's never a huge issue. Overall, this is a wonderfully colorful film which exhibits strong gradations of hues, excellent contrast and black levels, but which still never quite gets to the sharpness factor videophiles have come to expect from transfers of new films.

From Prada to Nada Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

From Prada to Nada's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix may not be the most over the top immersive affair in recent memory, but it's a lot of fun, especially with regard to the relentless use of source cues, which include everything from Katy Perry's "California Gurls" to multiple versions of the old chestnust "Cielito Lindo." Dialogue is crisp and clear and there are several excellent moments of well placed environmental sounds scattered around the soundfield, notably as the girls walk through the brightly colored streets of East Los Angeles. A lot of the film is quieter, two or three person dialogue sequences, and as such there isn't a lot of opportunity for incredibly immersive effects to begin with. Fidelity is excellent throughout the film, with really good dynamic range.

For the record, some of the film's characters speak in Spanish and there are encoded English subtitles for those moments.

From Prada to Nada Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• From Nada to Prada (HD; 23:41). This above average featurette describes the film's six year development process, as well as the filmmakers' attempts to try to create something for the Latin community. Background on casting and filming is also delved into.
• SPARC Your Imagination With Judy and Wilmer (HD; 17:55). The best supplement on the disc looks at muralist Judy Baca, who founded Los Angeles' Social and Public Art Resource Center 35 years ago. Baca served as the art consultant on the film, helping Wilmer with his portrayal of a young muralist.
• My Family, Mi Familia (HD; 31:28). This is a pretty silly and way too self-aware sit down with the principal cast and director, chatting "a year and a month and a half" after the film was made. The cast all starts out with supposedly hilarious self-introductions of incredibly long and nonsensical names. It doesn't get much better after that. For some reason, the video on this featurette is excessively noisy and is rather ugly to watch.
• Bloopers (HD; 2:40)
• Deleted Scenes (HD; 5:21). Several of these "deleted" scenes are simply longer scenes which exist in the film in edited form. There is one probably unintentionally funny moment that should have been in the Blooper reel when Olivia can't quite pronounce "rotunda" correctly.
• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:29)

From Prada to Nada Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I've absolutely loved several of the reworked Austen adaptations through the years, and so I had high hopes for From Prada to Nada. Unfortunately, despite a promising premise, the film just kind of falls flat, with uninspired writing, performances and direction. It's especially sad since it's obvious the filmmakers had noble intentions. Those intentions may not have paved the road to hell exactly, but the destination here is decidedly mediocre and isn't anywhere near caliente enough.