The Mambo Kings ***** (1992, Armand Assante, Antonio Banderas, Cathy Moriarty, Maruschka Detmers, Pablo Calogero, Desi Arnaz Jr) – Classic Movie Review 9530

Producer-director Arne Glimcher’s brilliant, beguling 1992 musical drama The Mambo Kings is the musical film as a style object.

Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas star in a soulful love story with music about two brothers Cesar and Nestor Castillo (Assante and Banderas) who are kicked out of Cuba in the 1950s and start a new life in the US working as meat packers while trying to establish a mambo band.

Lustful ladies’ man Cesar (Assante) finds a new love in Lanna Lake (Cathy Moriarty), and so does sensitive songwriter Nestor (Banderas), but Nestor cannot forget his unrequited love for the woman he left behind in Cuba.

The Mambo Kings is breathtakingly realised visually by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and director Glimcher’s ever-moving, probing camera. Cynthia Cidre’s unusual screenplay featuring a love story with two brothers is extremely moving.

It is an American art film and the best movie of its kind since New York, New York (1977). Banderas is very, very good in his US début but Assante is absolutely outstanding. Desi Arnaz Jr plays his own father, Desi Arnaz Sr.

Cidre’s screenplay is based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel by Oscar Hijuelos.

Also in the cast are Maruschka Detmers, Pablo Calogero, Scott Cohen, Pete Macnamara, J T Taylor, Celia Cruz, Roscoe Lee Browne, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Tito Puente and Talisa Soto.

Glimcher has directed only two more movies, Just Cause and The White River Kid.

Banderas was filming The Mambo Kings and could not join Pedro Almodóvar for High Heels (1991) and they did not reunite until The Skin I Live In (2011).

I Love Lucy was never broadcast live as seen in the movie.

It is the most recent movie of Desi Arnaz Jr, who has lived in Boulder City, Nevada, since 1986, where he owns and runs the historic Boulder Theatre.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9530

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