Real Women Have Curves is a fairly winning coming of age/slice of ethnic culture life film that succeeds in large part (forgive the pun) because of the spot on performance by it's big-boned protagonist - the lovely America Ferrara. Set in East L.A. the film is a mildly entertaining film that is a very general sense might be thought of as the Mexican version of my Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Directed by Patricia Cardoso the film focuses on Ana's plight as a promising High School graduate, who is expected to be content to spend the prime of her life laboring away in her older sister's dress-manufacturing sweatshop. To make matters worse, she must bear up under her mother's unrelenting criticism about her weight problem. Her mother is played by the venerable Latino actress Lupe Ontiveros (who you've seen playing sassy maids in dozens of films and is perhaps best remembered as the actress who killed Jennifer Lopez in the biopic Selena.

As good as Ontiveros is, I didn't really care for this performance - it was so stiffly drawn and though you knew she adored her daughter, she wasn't ever given the opportunity to express this to my satisfaction. And ended up being the stock character from start to finish. George Lopez was actually quite likable as Ana's High School counselor who went out of his way to help and encourage Ana pursue her dreams of getting into college, despite her family's resistance.

At first, Ana thinks she's too good for the sweatshop, and bridles at her menial job and considers such manual labor as the province of women of inferior intelligence and no self-esteem. But she gains a grudging respect for these women who grind it out day after day, in effect sewing dresses for the Cinderella's of the world for petty wages. And in the films most obviously funny and loopy scene openly rejects the cultural definition of beauty by starvation, by stripping down to her underwear to beat the heat and eventually drawing the rest of the workers into a battle of the bulge. It's a delightful and eye-opening scene that makes it's point well.

Again the film is carried on the broad shoulders of the guileless shoulders of America Ferrara who turns in an unforgettable performance in what some I'm sure would consider a forgettable film. She is confident, without being cocky and refuses to play along with anyone's lowered expectations of her, and she does a convincing job of proving that big is beautiful and this isn't just an empty cliche, she is a gorgeous young woman, regardless what the bathroom scale might report.

The film was adapted by George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez from Lopez' play, and though the film would have profited a good bit from relying less on the cliched characters that surrounded Ana. While no one is painted as a villain, and you understood the actions of all of the film's characters, had there been a little less predictability this film could have soared. As it is the film cruises - but it cruises well enough for a thumbs up.