What Foreigners Think Happens in Los Angeles but Doesn't

Rating: 6/10 (3 April 2006)

The performances are really strong especially in the face of dialog that has to remind the actors of Days of Our Lives more than any day in their real lives.
Every single person in every scene is a racist and/or a bad guy. Los Angeles is a very racially tolerant place (if you don't think so, I invite you to travel anywhere else and see how much you know about racial tolerance). You would be considered a nut case for making comments in public the way many of the characters do. Some people may make comments in private to friends, but the friends would consider them outside the mainstream for many of the remarks made in this film. Another example is with LAPD, where officers are thought of as under-supervised and half crooked. But even LAPD is portrayed in an unbelievable way. Leave aside that LAPD wouldn't patrol with 2 guys if they were in the area shown in the movie, it would be one, and they would not be both white if it were two. More to the point, if an LAPD officer were going to grope a girl he had just stopped, it would be anyone but the character in question. Officers would be, if anything, afraid of touching a black female if she were a member of the media especially. A mere accusation from such a person would trigger 3 investigations: internal LAPD, FBI for civil rights violations, and the news media. LAPD officers who have been arrested in the past show a pattern of abuse of power, but it's against gang members and drug dealers who have no interest in calling the police to report that their illegally obtained cash has been stolen along with the drugs they've been selling. If the filmmakers had thought to use that, it would have been more interesting and damning of LAPD than anything they presented. The movie is just asinine and anyone who takes it seriously is being taken for a ride.