The Children's Minute

The Childrens's Minute

hen comedy and poverty mix, one of them is probably lying. In the case of Popi, the plight of the poor is told with harrowing accuracy. It is the laughs that arise from calculated invention. A Puerto Rican widower, Popi (Alan Arkin) holds down three jobs to keep his family together. He is kept so busy that his children's hour is shrunk to a minute, and his two boys, Luis and Junior, are reduced to shiftless street Arabs.

The simultaneous dishwasher, apartment handyman and hospital orderly frantically adds another occupation to his schedule: logician. His syllogism is primer-simple, though specious: 1) Puerto Ricans grow up to be busboys or elevator men; 2) Cuban refugees are hailed as heroes; 3) a Puerto Rican who passes as Cuban will be hailed as a hero. Turning theory into practice, he trains the kids to navigate an outboard motorboat, drills them on Cuban geography and orders them to speak solamente en espanol. Then he busses them down to Miami and turns them loose on the outgoing tide. "Better to drown in the ocean, not the sewer," he claims,' underlining the film's melancholy message. Thirty-six hours later, Luis and Junior are brought ashore, sunstruck and dehydrated. On their hospital cots, the "orphans" are indeed hailed as heroes and plied with gifts. The trouble is, they would trade all the bikes and toys, all the chances for plush adoption, for life with Popi. As officials tumble to the truth and scandal hovers overhead, a HEW functionary asks, "How can we deprive the world of a happy ending to this fairy tale?" To the film's credit, it chooses deprivation.

As Popi, Arkin speaks with an accent that smacks aptly of the Caribbean, but many of his gestures are strictly Baltic. His perception of the role is something else entirely. A slight and soft-spoken man offscreen, he manages to give himself bulk and ferocity as a man driven up the walls of el barrio by the conflict of pride and circumstance. As a comedian, he clambers over the film to reach the top rank of American performers. Barking like a watchdog to frighten off apartment thieves, or purifying English curses into harmless Spanish, Arkin transforms slapstick into exuberant social comment.

The script, by Tina and Lester Pine, is not much more than a revival of the old tenement texts of the '30s. When it comes apart, it is repaired by the star --and by Miguel Alejandro and Ruben Figueroa. As Popi's boys, they are not kids but brittle, wizened old men who pay for survival in the slums with bits and pieces of their most valuable possession. For, as Popi sadly illustrates, the real crime on the streets is not riots or muggings. It is the stealing of childhood from children.

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