Star Maps
For his first feature film, writer/director Miguel Arteta introduces the imaginative premise that at least some of the Los Angeles vendors of maps to stars' homes are members of a Latino teen-prostitution ring. It's a plot device made to make a symbolic point and, like most elements of the film, it feels forced. Newcomer Douglas Spain plays a fresh-faced star-map prostitute inducted into the life by his father. With dreams of eventual movie stardom, he begins hustling, and before long, in another unlikely development, he becomes the personal favorite of a beautiful female TV star who promises to make his dreams come true. Star Maps rather transparently equates prostitution with show business; both exploit the impoverished and do no favors to minorities. It's a valid equation, but once the point is made, Star Maps has no place to go. But go it does, driving the metaphor home again and again while taking breaks to concentrate on a melodramatic subplot involving Spain's put-upon sister, mentally unstable mother, and brutish brother. Though watchable at first, and certainly strongly opinionated, Star Maps burns out early on.