Pepe the film

Its going to be on TCM for the first time ever in February

I saw this movie as a kid with my Mother and I remember, as we were coming out of it, my Mother huffing that the Americans made the Latinos look like idiots, whereas I loved the movie at the time and didn't really understand what she meant.
You must know that at the time Mario Moreno "Cantinflas" was a huge star to the Latin Americans and If I remember correctly he did always play a similar goofy character. Now you can hardly say that based on one character in a movie that he was representing all Latinos, but now after viewing it again almost 40 years later, I feel that I must agree with my Mother. This movie is such an egregious example of Hollywood "paternalistic colonialism" in which Pepe is made to look like a well meaning but dimwitted, almost childlike Mexican, who constantly gets in people's way and needs everything explained to him more than once in childlike language in order for him to get it right, which he usually doesn't anyway, leaving him to scratch his head in total befuddlement. On top of that he is totally neutered and made to react crestfallen or oblivious to rudeness from others (most Latinos I know are hardly sexual eunuchs, would certainly stand up for themselves if insulted and don't have any more or any less dimwitted people amongst themselves than any other population group). A case could be made that Cantinflas had a hand in allowing himself to be portrayed in such a manner, but maybe he was blinded by the Hollywood star wattage surrounding him and he was feeling only too grateful to be allowed in their presence in a movie with him as it's central character. The only good thing about this movie is the title song, which was one of my favorite movie theme songs as a child, even so on second listen the lyrics are painfully patronizing.