Not a Jet in sight, nor shark on the menu. Juana, a single Hispanic mother (Diana Elizabeth Torres), laughs in the face of ethnic and cultural bigotry to make it as a sushi chef in this video dropcloth stained with good intentions. Torres does her own impressive cutting board stunt work, but the crowd-pleasing festival morsel would have benefited by hiring the services of a Benihana chef as editorial consultant to slice and dice it down to under 90 minutes. Keeping her gender and ethnicity a secret so as not to influence the organizers, Juana enters a climactic regional sushi competition. Arriving just prior to broadcast, how is it the show, televised live, included pre-recorded cutaways to Juana? If writer, director Anthony Lucero can’t re-create TV, what chances does a feature have? SPOILER ALERT: Her taco-lovin’ papi/comic relief (Rodrigo Duarte Clark) eventually comes around. With Yutaka Takeuchi playing Tony to Torres’s Maria. (2014) — Scott Marks
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