Real Women Have Curves

Several full-figured women find themselves tossing aside personal prejudices and grudges to make a united statement about self-worth and inner and outer beauty in a moving, comic but often amateurish drama set in Los Angeles. America Ferrera gives an outstanding performance as Ana, a Mexican-American high school senior with brains who finds her social life and college plans constrained by family tradition and pressure to work in her sister’s dress shop. Her volatile relationship with her mother (Chuck & Buck’s Lupe Ontiveros), her relationship with a university-bound teen and her reaction to sweatshop working conditions are fertile ground for numerous domestic and social issues, but there are too many obvious pivot points, loose threads and missed opportunities to establish a consistent or lasting emotional urgency. Patricia Cardoso directs this sort of barrio version of a female Full Monty.