Talking About Colombia

Just saw “Sex & The City 2.” Made me cringe—do the writers not know of the tensions with the Arab world? To put Samantha in Abu Dhabi already tells you, trouble. Disrespect. Authentic American traveler. The movie, clearly, was made for American distribution (good for them, to know enough to make what the people watch. Carrie and the girls have raked in $162.3 million as of June 6, according to boxofficemojo.com. Guilty here, we had a girls’ night out and went to SATC2.)

There have been some movies about Colombia that I know enough to know, what I saw was not Colombia. But was Made for USA.

Example Numero Uno, “Romancing the Stone” with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. It was the first movie that centered on Colombia which I saw in a North American theatre. I’m dating myself: the movie came out in 1984, I was ten years-old. Every Colombian child knows about kidnappings, and I knew the movie had it wrong. First, you don’t go looking for the kidnappers. Second, there are no crocodiles in San Felipe Castle in Cartagena. And how is a shady guy like Jack T. Colton, an American who hangs out in Colombia awaiting dough to fall from the sky and who handles a machete like the next Samurai, the man Joan Wilder trusts?

Example Numero Dos, “Mr & Mrs. Smith.” At the start of the movie, there’s the scene in which Mr. and Mrs. Brangelina meet in Bogotá. First, Bogotá is in the mountains, in high elevation. It is frigid cold in the mornings there, and no matter how sexy Jane Smith thought she was, surely, she’d have a hacking cough by the time she kisses John Smith.

Nowadays, I chuckle at Gloria (Sofia Vergara) of “Modern Family.” She’s supposed to be a recent arrival, from a little Colombian village, and already she is a Desperate Housewife, clothing, clothes and hair included?