‘Latin History for Morons’ treats its audience thus
Non-Latinos, Leguizamo says, need to “reboot” their understanding (or lack thereof) on the subject, and Latinos need to “un-brainwash” themselves — a point driven home for Leguizamo, he says, when he saw his middle-school-age son watching a Western and “like, identifying with his captor, you know.”
Sure, in seeking to educate his son (which rapidly starts to feel like a flimsy vehicle for the rest of the show), Leguizamo throws out historical figures like Moctezuma, Cortés and Pizarro, but for most of us, those three already ring bells, and Leguizamo doesn’t go much deeper than proffering their names.
Loreta Velazquez, a Cuban American who wrote a book about disguising herself as a man to fight for the Confederate Army in the Civil War.
Leguizamo, an Emmy Award-winning performer known for his work in the “Ice Age” movie franchise, “ER” and “Romeo + Juliet,” is in this show an equal opportunity offender, but it’s not clear what tired impersonations of everyone from Jews to the deaf, from Stephen Hawking to Mike Tyson, can add to a show supposedly about Latin history other than pander to an audience probably much less hostile and much more educated than Leguizamo imagines.
Under the direction of Tony Taccone, Leguizamo is always in fervent motion — the show’s truest moment might be when he drops everything and breaks into merengue — but with the range and studied control of a modern dancer.
[...] he clearly relishes being in front of an audience, seeming to refuel past tank capacity with every laugh break.
[...] that same quality also manifests as an excessive eagerness to please, meaning Leguizamo treats his audiences as doubly moronic: both ignorant of Latin history and too ignorant to reckon with their ignorance.