Populated with lovable outcasts and noble pariahs, Quinceañera takes a bland approach to what ought to be a spicy stew of culture clashes. You’ve got conflicts involving sex, sexual difference, ethnicity, class, and, most importantly—this being Los Angeles—real estate. Filmmakers Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer live in the fast-gentrifying neighborhood of Echo Park, and they get all the local details right: the Hispanic teens madly text-messaging one another after school, the old men selling hot champurrado on the street, the storefront Pentecostal churches, and the affluent, childless gringos (like the co-directors themselves) swooping down on bargain real estate—often making themselves reluctant landlords of tenants, there for decades, who properly consider the neighborhood their own. Maybe because the filmmakers clearly have so much affection for this disputed turf, they have a hard time wringing any drama or surprise from Quinceañera. It’s the kind of movie where one character can say to another, “You live in a whole different world,” and be told, “You do.” See—both parties have a little something to learn from the other. Can’t we all just get along?

The title refers to the traditional Latino celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday. As she plans her party, Magdalena (Emily Rios) envies the stretch Hummer and other status tokens her cousins can afford. Her family is comparatively poor, and her boyfriend seems comparatively nice, but that doesn’t prevent a predictable crisis banishing her to the home of her great uncle Tomas (Chalo Gonzalez). Well into his 80s, Tomas accepts Magdalena without judgment, just as he’s done the other refugee in his small backyard bungalow—her cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia), a tough tattooed cholo also spurned by his family. Like the elaborately beaded, glass-bottle-bedecked garden he’s been tending for 28 years, Tomas gently nurtures the two to flourish in their hard soil.

Meanwhile, the gay couple who buys the property on which Tomas’ house and garden sit aren’t villains (and they like the way muscled Carlos fills out his wife-beater), but neither are they more than types. They’re just a pair of white liberals looking for a bit of guilt-free sex and fun, with no real appreciation of the Hispanic culture around them. They’re fundamentally decent, like Tomas, like Magdalena, like Carlos—which is the problem with the movie. There aren’t any real flaws because there aren’t any real characters on the page, and the actors aren’t strong enough to flesh them out. In its well-meaning way, Quinceañera shows the limitations of treating everyone so fairly. BRIAN MILLER