News Day Thanks to Dan for this information! Recipe for Friendship 'Adobo' is a tasty Filipino-American dish (2 1/2 STARS) AMERICAN ADOBO (R). Filipino friends in New York City cope with the country, their friends and their hearts. Sometimes clumsy, often very tender. With Paolo Montalban, Dina Bonnevie, Ricky Davao, Cherry Pie Picache, Randy Becker and Christopher De Leon. Written by Vincent R. Nebrida. Directed by Laurice Guillen. By John Anderson STAFF WRITER January 25, 2002 THE INTENTION of "American Adobo" screenwriter Vincent Nebrida and director Laurice Guillen is to translate America via Filipino eyes - the way filmmakers Mira Nair, Edward James Olmos and Tony Chan have done for Indians, Hispanics and Chinese, respectively. But it's the way they treat the totally nonethnic aspects of life - love, loneliness, dying, friendship - that makes the film so attractive in its way. And, in an ideal sense, at least, so American. Low on budget, high on affection, "American Adobo" (adobo being the Philippine national dish) has a distinctly familiar setup: five friends, former classmates, get together to share native food and stay in touch with their mutual roots. Transplants to New York, they personify the diversity of their new home. In fact, if they weren't fellow countrymen, they wouldn't have anything in common at all. Mike (Christopher De Leon) is a former political activist from Manila who works for a Philippines-based newspaper and is married to a cartoonishly shrewish, but wealthy, compulsive mahjongg player. Marissa (Dina Bonnevie) is a flighty babe with a philandering boyfriend (Randy Becker), who can't slow down long enough to see her life is a mess. Her male counterpart, Raul (Paolo Montalban), is up to his eyeballs in women and, ultimately, trouble. But Nebrida's best-drawn characters, and easily the most sympathetic, are the two in the most despair. Tere (the deliciously named Cherry Pie Picache) is the one who keeps everyone together, does the hostessing, cooks the adobo, but is so lonely you could cry. "I could always use a man to bring some misery into my life," she mockingly tells Marissa, although there's nothing she'd like better. Less lonely, but just as frayed, is Gerry (Ricky Davao), a genial sweetheart whose lover is dying of AIDS, whose virus of a mother doesn't know (or want to know) he's gay and who accidentally mails naked vacation pictures home to Manila. Why Mom, or Gerry's close friends for that matter, are unaware of his gayness is the kind of question you probably shouldn't ask of "American Adobo." Another might be why so much cruel, if not clinically psychotic, behavior is allowed to go on among people who supposedly care for each other. Or why (although it's a motif that's adjusted by the end of the film) all the non-Filipinos we meet are such nightmares - Marissa's cheating boyfriend, Raul's bimbo girlfriend, the men who call up and break Tere's heart. Still, while "American Adobo" should have no problem finding a Filipino-American audience, it really is a pan-American movie, with moments of genuine insight into the urban heart. And characters, a few at least, who are well worth getting to know. Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.