Gabriela (2001) from Tuna

Gabriela is on a par with Harlequin novels. That is to say, it is only suitable for providing shower nozzle masturbation fantasy material for emotionally and romantically starved women.

A young social worker (Jaime Gomez) is working at a private mental hospital, and is looking for the one perfect woman to be devoted to, when in walks Gabriela (Seidy Lopez), student intern/therapist in training. The attraction is instantaneous, but there is a minor complication. She is living with her fiancé, and her traditional Mexican family is pushing for a wedding. The two can't deny their feelings, and end up in bed. But when her fiancé catches them, she decides to go back to him, and go through with the wedding to the wrong man because that is what her family wants.

Here is where we get to the estrogen overload. Gomez follows her to Mexico, crashes the wedding, proposing to her, and finally wins her consent singing her favorite song in Spanish, while all of her relatives applaud. So she gets the perfect guy who is totally devoted to her. 

Production values are good. The stars are attractive, all of the acting, even from the mental patients, was well above average, and the art direction was very good, but it was far too sappy and syrupy for me.

One IMDb reviewer seems to have put that high IMDb score into perspective:

"Vincent Jay Miller apparently has been successful in getting everyone who worked on this movie, along with their family and friends, to give this movie perfect votes of 10 and leaving glowing reviews.

Scanning my local theater listings, I came across this movie. Having never heard anything about Gabriela, I, of course, came here to imdb.com to learn more about it. Much to my surprise I find that the movie has a User Rating of 9.5 with 113 votes. With a 9.5 rating I figure this movie must be the sleeper movie of the year. Heck, The Godfather only has a rating of 8.9. However, the movie I saw is a 9.5 rated movie in Bizarro World only.

I graciously give the movie a 6 out of 10. Graciously because I am giving the movie extra credit for being an independent film. The movie is a very freshman effort. The script and direction is lacking. Some scenes work but most do not. The characters with the exception of the grandmother seem to be under played.

By having his actors act behind the most distracting objects, Miller may have already created his signature look. There is a scene with a huge flower display on a restaurant table in which two actors can barely see each other without making an effort. Another scene is in a room full of large paper strings hanging from balloons on the ceiling. And still another takes place behind a kitchen island filled with such picture perfect vegetables that it could have come out of Better Homes and Gardens.

If you have a love of low budget independent film you may be interested in seeing this movie, however I fear most people will find the movie very boring. I find it very interesting that of the 15 people who wrote glowing reviews 9 of them have written reviews for this movie only, and the other 6 have only written one other review. Assuming these people are not associated with this movie, I fail to understand how Gabriela could practically be the only movie to inspire them to write a review."