In the film A Day Without a Mexican, California awakes one morning to find that a third of its population, the Mexicans, have disappeared. The white population must suddenly learn how to get through a day without their nannies, housekeepers, farmers, news reporters, politicians, etc.

To make matters worse, the remaining population is surrounded by a pink fog that blocks all cell phone and Internet communications going out of the state. The film follows a state senator whose maid doesn't show up for work, a woman whose musician husband disappears and a farmer whose employees don't show up for work, leaving the oranges ripe and unpicked.

A Day Without a Mexican, which came out in 2004, is a satirical attempt to show how life would be if there were no Mexicans in the United States. The recent restrictions placed on immigrants in Arizona as well as issues raised in our state's gubernatorial election debates have made this movie relevant once again.

However, while this movie should give us something to consider, it fails. Most of the scenes that were supposed to be amusing weren't; they were trite and irrelevant.

There was an inane comparison of sombreros to flying saucers and ridicule of the large size of Mexican families without exploring the social significance of this fact. Demographics on the numbers of Latinos in California were given, but the implications were not shown. Abuses of illegal Mexicans by corporations and the hardships these families face were not delved into. In fact, the differences between legal and illegal immigrants were not addressed in any way. If you see this movie in a video store or on Netflix, don't bother renting it.

A Day Without a Mexican had the potential to educate and bring people together through the use of humor, but it was truly a waste of 100 minutes.

Marielle Dent is a sophomore at Academy for Technology and the Classics. You can contact her at onyx-13@hotmail.com.