Movie Review: Dance Flick

Dance Flick (2009) 

Directed by Damien Dante Wayans

Written by Keenan Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Craig Wayans 

Starring Shoshana Bush, Damon Wayans Jr, Essence Atkins, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans 

Release Date May 22nd, 2009 

Published May 23rd, 2009

Streaming on Starz via Amazon Prime (Subscription) 

The spoof movie hasn't been funny since Airplane 2. Fact. You want to talk Naked Gun? It's not necessarily a spoof movie. A spoof movie is one that takes particular movies or genres and aims to send up their inherent ideas and conventions. Scary Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Date Movie. There is not one laugh in any of these movies.

What we get instead are a series of thuddingly obvious jokes, vague impressions and head scratching vulgarity without any real aim. Dance Flick joins this laughless group.

Directed by Damian Dante Wayans, Dance Flick takes on the conventions of the dance movie starting with the premise of the 2000 drama Save The Last Dance and integrating it with riffs on You Got Served, Step Up and Stomp The Yard. It's not exactly timely. Save The Last Dance which gives Dance Flick its form and plot is nearly a decade old. Step Up 2 bombed last year and my memory of You Got Served and Stomp The Yard would have run together years ago were it not for IMDB.

Given the nature of our moderm media being timely while making movies is not easy. Movies take several months to make and by the time a movie like Dance Flick is completed and released the movies being riffed on are already well out of the cultural memory.

That hasn't stopped the Wayans Brothers in the past from desperately and vainly attempting to be of the moment and their spawn, the makers of Epic Movie, the Scary Movie sequels, Disaster Movie and the like from trying to be timely and failing miserably. In this way, Damian Dante Wayans is really a risk taker, he picks an older movie and sticks to it giving his movie a form that doesn't necessarily rely on timeliness.

Sure, some of the jokes feel a little past their sell by date but they are slightly less desperate than those of other similar movies. Unfortunately, they're just as unfunny. Dance Flick despite not sweating the times Dance Flick still fails to find the funny by crafting jokes so obvious, dumb and outright insulting that the audience spends more time predicting the next joke than laughing at it.

There is one laugh in the movie. It comes when Damian Wayans as the star of the film Thomas and Shoshanna Bush, riffing Julia Stiles luckless character from Save The Last Dance, are talking about her mother dying and Wayans goes off blaming her for her mother's death. It's mostly Wayans' manner that is funny and not necessarily any particular joke, but funny is funny. I laughed.

The biggest obstacle to the parody of Dance Flick is the fact that the targets themselves are so earnestly committed to their dancing premises that they really are send ups of themselves. Movies like Save The Last Dance or Step Up or You Got Served are so campy in their earnest attempts at making dance seem like the most important thing in the world that, in a way, that earnestness beoomes shield from the kind of mocking dealt out in Dance Flick. If something is already ridiculous how does one make it more ridiculous?

Dance Flick doesn't stink nearly as bad as Disaster Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movie or the like but that is a pretty low bar. As I said before there is one laugh in this movie and that's it. If one laugh is good enough for you then absolutely see Dance Flick. Why pay 7 to 11 dollars to see something like Dance Flick when movies it parodies like Save The Last Dance, Stomp The Yard, Step Up and You Got Served themselves have inherently humorous moments that nearly send up themselves.

Movie Review Little Man

Little Man (2006) 

Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans 

Written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans

Starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Kerry Washington, Tracy Morgan, Chazz Palminteri 

Release Date July 14th, 2008 

Published July 14th, 2008

The Wayans' brothers brand of lowbrow humor is undeniably popular. Having driven the cross dressing comedy White Chicks to box office heights no one expected, the brothers were also the minds behind the Scary Movie franchise before branching out on their own. The Wayans brothers joint is another high concept comedy with a transformational twist. In Little Man Marlon Wayans transforms from a 6 foot 2 inch, rail thin, stick figure to a 3 foot tall, barrel chested criminal dwarf. It's a shockingly good special effect. If only the film's comedy were as impressive.

Fresh from prison Calvin (Marlon Wayans) and his pal Percy (Tracey Morgan) have already landed a new criminal gig. They are to steal a giant diamond from a jewelry store and deliver it to a gangster (Chazz Palminteri) in exchange for 100,000 dollars. To get the diamond Percy packs the diminutive three foot tall Calvin into a gym bag and lets him loose in the store while he distracts the employees.

Things don't go as planned and soon the pair are being chased by the cops and must ditch the diamond. Calvin drops the rock into the bag of a newlywed couple, Darryl (Shawn Wayans) and Vanessa (Kerry Washington), in a grocery store in hopes of snatching it back after the cops have left. Unfortunately for Calvin, the couple leaves the store before the cops and now he and Percy must find a way to get the diamond back without simply busting down the couple's door.

So Calvin launches a complicated plan. Having overheard Darryl and Vanessa in the grocery store arguing about having a baby, Calvin decides he will give them a baby. With Percy placing him in a basket with a note, Calvin will become baby Cal and infiltrate the home and when Darryl and Vanessa aren't looking he will steal back the diamond and make his escape.

Of course if the plot were that simple there would be no movie. Thus, we get scenes of Calvin being changed -surprisingly large penis for a baby, ha ha-, Calvin being nursed -he's got a full set of teeth, hee hee- and a disturbing scene where Vanessa awakens having been fully, hmm, satisfied and finding Calvin in bed next to her, Ugh.

The jokes are the typical low brow variety that the Wayans' brothers have made bank off of in each of their previous efforts so why change now. Just because I don't find anything in Little Man all that funny doesn't mean there is not an audience for this brand of humor and the box office returns for the far more abysmally unfunny White Chicks prove that.

This is why I don't hate Little Man,  I just don't care anymore. The Wayans' have desensitized me to this level of gross out, low-brow humor. So Calvin posing as a baby is inferred to have had sex with Vanessa, I don't care. So, there are numerous diaper changing jokes, I really don't care. The Wayans' brand of humor has become so mundanely offensive that apathy has set in.

The one thing that surprised me and even roused my imagination for a moment during Little Man was the interesting special effects used to turn the 6 foot 2 inch Marlon Wayans into a three foot tall criminal.  On a technical level it's so good that I was able to forget about it and return to being bored into a stupor by the rest of the film very early on. That is impressive in some way.

Keenan Ivory Wayans is not a bad director, just a director with a low standard for humor. A veteran of years of sketch comedy and now several features, Keenan knows how to develop a strong rhythm and coherence to his stories. Now if the stories were funnier maybe his skill in crafting a feature comedy might be easier to recognize.

In the end, Little Man is not awful enough for me to trash in the worst movie of the year kind of way. It is, however, not nearly good enough for me to recommend even to the most forgiving moviegoer. My general feelings towards Little Man are ones of apathy. I simply did not care about the movie enough to like it or dislike it. Critics don't often offer such dispassionate opinions but I offer you one here. I simply don't care about Little Man.

Movie Review: White Chicks

White Chicks (2004) 

Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans 

Written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans 

Starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Terry Crews, Frankie Faizon 

Release Date June 23rd, 2004

Published June 23rd, 2004 

This may be an unpopular admission, but I like Shawn and Marlon Wayans.

After their disastrous hosting job on the MTV Movie Awards a couple years back, the boys were savaged by many. The second film in the Scary Movie franchise did little to help their reputation. Still in their short lived TV series, the first Scary Movie and in countless interviews, the brothers have come off as likable, intelligent and funny. So I like them. Which makes White Chicks a difficult film to review because the brothers are far less than likable in this dreadful cross-dressing comedy.

Shawn and Marlon play brothers and undercover FBI agents Kevin and Marcus Copeland. When we meet them they are undercover in a grocery store where a drug deal is supposed to go down. Too bad the guys grab the wrong guys and the real bad guys get away. Worse yet, their undercover mission was not authorized by their boss (Frankie Faizon) and they are almost fired.

Barely retaining their jobs, Kevin and Marcus are stuck with a crappy babysitting gig far from the action of the big case. The brother’s job is to escort bitchy socialite sisters Brittany (Maitland Ward) and Tiffany Wilson (Anne Dudek) to the Hamptons where the sisters are bait in a kidnapping sting. Of course Kevin and Marcus screw up, a car accident leaves the girls slightly banged up and they refuse to go to the Hamptons. This leaves Marcus and Kevin with only one option, call a bunch of makeup and costume artists and take the girl’s place.

Okay so there were a number of better options but this was the only one that got our heroes into white-face and drag. Now the boys must convince everyone from their FBI partners to Tiff and Brit's closest friends and enemies that they are the Wilson sisters. This is where the film completely tosses plausibility to the wind in favor of impossible contrivance.

Yes I realize there is a thing in Hollywood movies called the willing suspension of disbelief, but this is ridiculous. Anyone who could mistake Shawn and Marlon Wayans in their drag get-ups as these two attractive women, Maitland Ward and Anne Dudek, would have to blind, deaf and dumb. That is a little bit too much suspension of disbelief for me. I might be willing to overlook it a little in Marlon's case, his slight frame is better suited for drag, but Shawn Wayans looks only like a man in a bad drag outfit.

Even if the drag bit were a little more convincing, the plot and the various comic situations are so dreary that it wouldn't matter. After dressing Shawn and Marlon in drag, co-writer, director and big brother Keenan Ivory Wayans can think of nothing funnier than having them win a dance contest and act black stereotypes under the guise of being white woman. The running gag is that the guys can't help but revert to being themselves in situations where they are supposed to be acting like white chicks.

The kidnapping plot is far less inspired, involving a career low performance from John Heard as well as the smoking hot Brittany Daniel and model Jaimie King. The only actor that walks out of White Chicks better off is former football star Terry Crews who tops both Marlon and Shawn in the number of laughs, even with far less screentime. 

Crews' character Latrell is a basketball star with a fetish for, ahem, white chicks. When he takes a liking to Marlon in the guise of Tiffany, it leads to the film’s best scene, the restaurant date so prominently shown in the film’s trailer. There is more to that what is seen in the trailer and it's almost worth the price of admission. Just wait till Crews sings, by far the film’s biggest sustained laugh, or maybe it's only sustained laugh.

The problem comes from the idea of parodying Paris and Nicole Hilton who are the oh-so-obvious templates for the film’s bitchy heiresses. Paris is already such an outsized character, on TV every week making a continuing fool of herself and not caring or realizing. Parody of her behavior is far less interesting than the real thing. Worse yet, the little satire that they include has no bite. It's in fact sympathetic to the stick thin, shopping obsessed socialites that are supposed to be its targets.

I know the Wayans Brothers are funny but they need to cultivate better material. Shawn and Marlon are credited with the script with big brother Keenan but there is also a lawsuit soon to hit the courts from a couple guys who claim they submitted this idea to the Wayans’ production company. Why anyone would want to claim this script is beyond me, but on the bright side maybe all these bad jokes weren't entirely the Wayans fault.