Nine-year-old Carlos aka Carlitos is one of the countless children left behind by parents who come to the U.S. seeking a way to provide for their families. His mother, Rosario, has worked illegally as a domestic in Los Angeles for four years, sending money home to her son and mother to give them a chance at a better life. When the death of his grandmother leaves young Carlitos alone, he takes his fate into his own hands and heads north across the border to find his mother. As he journeys from his rural Mexican village to the L.A. barrio, Carlitos faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles with a steely determination and unfettered optimism that earn him the grudging respect and affection of a reluctant protector, a middle-aged migrant worker named Enrique. The unlikely pair finds its way from Tucson to East L.A., but the only clue Carlitos has to his mother’s whereabouts is her description of the street corner from which she has called him each Sunday for the last four years. Unaware that Rosario is only hours away from returning to Mexico to be with her son, Carlitos and Enrique desperately comb the vast unfamiliar city for a place he has seen only in his imagination. - skip ad - Genres: Art/Foreign, Drama and Politics/Religion Running Time: 1 hr. 49 min. Release Date: March 19th, 2008 (limited) MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some mature thematic elements. Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures, The Weinstein Company Cast And Credits Starring: Kate Del Castillo, Adrian Alonso, America Ferrera, Eugenio Derbez, Carmen Salinas Directed by: Patricia Riggen Produced by: Norman Dreyfuss, Ligiah Villalobos, Ram Bergman

“Under the Same Moon,” an “Incredible Journey” for the socially conscience-stricken, arrives in theaters trailing a standing ovation from last year’s Sundance Film Festival and more than a whiff of sanctimony. And even allowing that Sundance audiences are notoriously unreliable arbiters of quality — for every “Spanking the Monkey,” there’s a “Spitfire Grill” and a “Quinceañera” — their wholehearted embrace of this manipulative, saccharin product is dispiriting.

Like “Cinema Paradiso” and its tyke-centered ilk, “Under the Same Moon” places all its marketing eggs in the cute-kid basket, a container to which American art-house audiences seem particularly drawn.

This time the bowling-ball eyes and scripted precociousness belong to the 9-year-old Carlitos (played by the 13-year-old Adrián Alonso), a Mexican moppet whose mother, Rosario (Kate del Castillo), works as an illegal domestic in Los Angeles. Every week Rosario calls her son from the same pay phone, while the movie milks sentiment from their separation and semaphores their reunion, an event as preordained as the end credits.

If only predictability were the worst of it. When Carlitos loses his caretaker and resolves to journey to Los Angeles on his own, the movie lines up a succession of nasty gringos to block his path.

As he evades the clutches of a drug addict, child traffickers and the United States Border Patrol, nonwhites rally to protect him in the form of kindly migrant workers and traveling musicians. Meanwhile, jaunty musical interludes ensure that none of this becomes too depressing.

Of course Carlitos, with his preternatural composure and limitless spunk (the actor is a veteran of five features and countless television commercials), is never in any real danger. Besting challenges ranging from the implausible to the shamelessly contrived, the boy soldiers on to Mommy and an ending requiring the suspension of not only disbelief but also of all cognitive function.

Written by Ligiah Villalobos — who worked as a studio executive and knows what sells — and directed, with visible earnestness, by Patricia Riggen, “Under the Same Moon” blunts the hard edges of immigration with a thick coating of preciousness. Despite engaging performances from Ms. del Castillo and the terrific Eugenio Derbez as a testy road warrior — and some astute “Ugly Betty” product placement in the form of an America Ferrera cameo — the movie appears intended solely to encourage critics to wear out the word “heartwarming.”

This is screenwriting by numbers. Unlike, say, Ken Loach’s marvelous “Bread and Roses,” “Under the Same Moon” is too busy sanctifying its protagonists and prodding our tear ducts to say anything remotely novel about immigration policies or their helpless victims.

The filmmakers know that middlebrow movie audiences prefer their thorny social issues served lite and with a side order of ham, an opportunity to shed happy tears and enjoy a guilt-free drive home to the (let us hope, legal) baby sitter.

“Under the Same Moon” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has bad white people, hard-working brown people and morally ambivalent people of mixed race.