'MEXICAN': BORDERLINE SATIRE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

A WILDLY CLEVER satirical concept gets some of the treatment it deserves in ``A Day Without a Mexican.'' The video-shot movie's vast ambition, though, regularly overwhelms its creators, married co-writers Yareli Arizmendi, who also stars, and Sergio Arau, who directed.

Sometimes uproarious, occasionally moving, not as politically ruthless as it needed to be and too obvious too often, the film works a very tricky premise that threatens to defeat its own point. To wit: What if a third of California's population - all the Latinos - suddenly disappeared? The collective absence makes the ``invisible'' ethnic group suddenly, disastrously noticeable.

Layering a ``Twilight Zone'' motif onto the apocalyptic one - the state is surrounded by an impenetrable pink fog that prevents all contact with the outside world - the movie is primarily about how the remaining Californians cope without the domestics, day laborers, cops, lieutenant governors, etc. that few realized they depended on.

They don't cope well, of course. Restaurants implode, the fresh produce market falls into the hands of narcotics dealers and pro baseball grinds to a halt.

Immigrant-bashing Sacramento pol Abercrombie (John Getz) becomes acting governor during the emergency, and finds it politically expedient to reach out to the now-missing Mexicans (and yes, the movie is well aware that not all the missing are of Mexican descent; it plays on the idea that Anglos can't make the national distinctions). A Bay Area housewife (Maureen Flannigan) has to tiptoe around the predictable reason why her rock musician husband (the late Eduardo Palomo) and son disappear, but not their daughter. A Central Valley ranching family falls out over racial attitudes that have polarized over generations. And border patrollers are at a loss over what to do with their lives.

The main drama revolves around San Diego TV reporter Lila Rodriguez (Arizmendi), apparently California's only remaining Latina. She is studied, tested and watched on 24-hour ``Lilacam,'' in the hope that she might provide a solution to the mystery. It all becomes quite the media circus, as expressions of both affection and hate pour in from diverse factions of left-behind Californians.

Everything under the Golden State sun gets satirized, from UFO nuts to Rapture-happy fundamentalists to exploitative TV hacks. Arau, whose father Alfonso directed ``Like Water For Chocolate'' (in which Arizmendi appeared), is a Mexican cartoonist, publisher and musician, and his first feature certainly reflects his wide range of interests. But he also lends the film a diffuse quality and accompanying sense of superficiality. ``Day Without'' feels like it's trying to do too much to do any of it incisively (many gags involve stereotype-questioning statistical subtitles scrawled across the screen).

To be fair, though, with such a huge subject as the social impact of California's Latinos, it's hard to fault Arau and company for going for a comprehensive approach. And ``Day Without,'' though marked by a generally jaunty shallowness, also boasts some marvelously apt images of loss, like an untended leaf-blower slowly spinning on a patch of dry grass, or that unfaithful mother hanging dry-cleaning on the mike stands of her husband's missing band.

While it might have been better, we're definitely better off for having ``A Day Without a Mexican'' around.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

A DAY WITHOUT A MEXICAN - Two and one half stars

(R: language, sex, drug use)

Starring: Yareli Arizmendi, Caroline Aaron, Maureen Flannigan, John Getz, Eduardo Palomo, Muse Watson.

Director: Sergio Arau.

Running time: 1 hr. 37 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Ambitious, hit-and-miss satire of what might happen if all the Latinos in California suddenly disappeared. Sometimes very funny, too often repetitive, should've been angrier.

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Yareli Arizmendi plays a reporter who remains the only Latina in California in ``A Day Without a Mexican.''