MOVIE REVIEW

'Sabor Tropical': It doesn't add up to much

Independent filmmaker Jorge Ameer's latest release is part travelogue, part melodrama and mostly tedious.

By Kevin Thomas

June 24, 2009

Jorge Ameer's unwieldy "Sabor Tropical" (Tropical Flavor) is part travelogue and part melodrama, and the two parts don't add up to much more than tedium. Ameer plays an online journalist, accompanying and filming Brian (Matthew Leitch), who's fleeing a romance gone sour, hoping to find sex and fun at Panama's Las Tablas carnival.

Ameer takes far too long to get Brian, who comes across as cocky and spoiled, to Las Tablas, where the carnival really is spectacular. However, when the girl Brian hooks up with online turns out to be a guy (Jose Rosete), murky melodrama kicks in.

Never a sympathetic or charismatic presence, Leitch is upstaged by Rosete, better looking and more talented, in his brief appearance.

Ameer is a persistent and prolific independent filmmaker who specializes in gay themes and who gets his films theatrical releases, but perhaps if he tackled fewer projects they might be more effective.

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