Awful ending

I hated the ending. Flor is selfish and misguided. She is so worried about her perceived threat of her child losing not her child's identity but her own. She quit a job that was working for her and she wouldn't let her daughter accept a scholarship to a good school. Now I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the private school was a shade better then the public school in a low income area. The Clasky family was nothing but nice to her daughter and it would have been better for her daughter's welfare to suck it up and accept help. Now shes alone, poor, and her daughter is disadvantaged...thats really the "right" thing?

The broadcast version had a few *edits* that made a difference in the flow of the story, so it may help if the entire movie is actually viewed...

This is a movie that benefits from several viewings, and some extra thought by the viewers.

One of the reasons the private school scholarship was *declined* can go back as far as the business of the sea glass where Christina filled an entire bucket for the $5 per piece.
Sandler's character clearly had expected all the children to make only a half-hearted effort, since "the rich" expected no more from their own children. Flor would have made a very different assumption because she would have expected more effort from Christina. The movie progressed from there to show how much Christina's view of the world was changing.
When Flor insisted Christina return the money, it was a lesson in how differently the two families valued money. Flor expected the worst when she considered that a days work for a child could not possibly be worth a month of her own pay, and what else would be expected for that money! While Sandler's character had no ill intentions, he did live up to the bargain as he had stated it, even though the result was based upon his poor assumption of the children's work ethic. It later showed that his own work ethic (in his own restaurant) was more than what he expected from the children!

I expected the attraction between Sandler's character and Flor was resolved at the end of the restaurant dinner segment, but beyond that was based on Flor's expectation of any appearance of impropriety for the remainder of the movie. (cultural differences at work again...)



From my experience as a member of a family that hosted high school foreign exchange students, I probably have a different perspective than most other people.
The first exchange student wanted to be moved to a different host family just before Christmas, ultimately because of cultural differences. Our own expectation of Christmas gifts was for multiple gifts at Christmas, while her own was for one good gift at Christmas with smaller gifts leading up to Christmas. We had also put the gifts inside multiple boxes to hide what they might be, and she had no way to compete with what she saw as an avalanche of large gifts under the tree for her. (not that different from the sea glass money in the movie I guess...)
Luckily we got that all resolved before she moved... We also had not recognized/celebrated several major holidays from her country, since we didn't know about them! Two American examples are the American Thanksgiving and 4th of July holidays that are not celebrated by the rest of the world. She had not told us about her country's holidays because she expected that everyone knew, and she was a bit shy as well; we had not thought to ask her either.

It is funny how people don't know about the things they don't know...

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