Senteur
As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.
Sameer Callahan
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Mehdi Hoffman
There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
Lucia Ayala
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Manila Food Crawl
American Adobo is a serviceable attempt at creating an insightful food- themed film in the tradition of Eat Drink Man Woman and other successful Asian food movies.The movie is a comedy, but no Filipino flick is complete without anyone shedding a tear or going hysterical. So expect hefty servings of good old Pinoy-style melodrama.Overall, American Adobo is not without its flaws. But it definitely has a lot of heart.Read more here: https://manilafoodcrawl.com/2017/01/19/pinoy-food- movie-of-the-week-american-adobo-2001/
Polaris_DiB
Here's another culture-inspired indie movie about Filipinos that, well, laugh, love, make food, talk about social issues of being Filipino-Americans, and get all heartbroken and stuff. While I don't mind any of that (and indeed was willing to watch this movie), still, I found the characters to be weak and mostly fall into type. The range includes the activist sell-out, closet gay man, womanizer, neurotic old-maid, and unhappy society woman. Of these characters, the only one even remotely interesting is the womanizer because he at least seems like he has a backbone. The rest come up with the most contrived and unproductive reasons to make themselves unhappy so that they can hide their individual nature behind discussions about Filipino culture, which if you think about it isn't a very valuable way to approach it.I don't know how big the Filipino-American market for this movie is--considering a certain line of dialog, probably not that big and with much worse movies. I found the better parts of this movie were the parts that actually engaged with the characters' culture instead of using it as an excuse to get all sappy, and I actually rather enjoyed the way the dialog went back and forth between Filipino and English almost breathlessly. I would like to see someone take that way of delivering dialog and make a better, more fleshed out movie about it. This one suffered too much from clinging to recognizable types.--PolarisDiB
pltiwalu
if this was written by Richard Curtis ( four weddings and a funeral. Notting Hill ), it might made a better film. Although most of the conversations were made round the table, they might have been eating fish and chips. If your a Filipino watching the film, you have an idea what food would be served, but what about us non Filipino?.The film does not show the Filipino in a good light. The single man treats women like dirt ( is that why most Filipino women leave their country to become domestic helpers ) The good looking woman chooses a man, who is not in the same league as her. The married man works and his children are dreadful and his wife is a cow (reminds us that somethings don't change ). The gay and the virgin are the only normal people??? Is that representative of the Filipino abroad? Anyway the acting was good, and with a little more thought to the script, the film could have been more than average.
joycesp
Made me embarrassed to be Filipino. Oversentimental, disconnected, melodramatic drivel that plays on what some people think of as Filipino stereotypes, perpetuates them, and then attempts to put them together in one group setting. The acting is bad, the writing is bad -so do yourself a favor and save your rental fees.