Movie Review Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen (2009) 

Directed by F. Gary Gray

Written by Kurt Wimmer

Starring Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Bruce McGill, Colm Meaney, Regina Hall

Release Date October 16th, 2009 

Few genres turn out the kind of mind numbingly dull-witted tripe that the action thriller genre does. It's the most prominent genre among the direct to DVD market because it's easy to script and craft. Take one all knowing baddie. Give him an unending budget. Give him a flawed but honorable adversary with less means but as much wit. Then just add explosions and a predictable ending and you're done.

Director F. Gary Gray sticks close to the formula with Law Abiding Citizen, a film that would be prime for the direct to DVD market if Jamie Foxx hadn't won an Oscar and if Hollywood weren't determined to convince us all how much we love Gerard Butler.

Butler is the ostensible star of Law Abiding Citizen as Clyde Shelton. One night as Clyde is hanging out with his wife and daughter there is a knock at the door. When Clyde answers he's met with a baseball bat to the skull. Two men invade his home, tie him up, stab him and leave him to watch as they do the same and worse to his wife and as he passes into unconsciousness, his daughter is killed.

Months later, the home invaders are under arrest but one arrogant, conviction rate concerned, ADA, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), decides that there isn't enough evidence to convict them both. He takes a deal that will send one man to the death chamber and the other to a stunningly brief sentence. Worst of all, the wrong one is going to his death.

Clyde is devastated and for the next ten years he dedicates himself to revenge. On the day that one of the attackers is to be executed, Clyde makes his move. Soon the other, nastier man, now out of prison, is also dead and Clyde isn't finished. Under arrest for murder, Clyde sets in motion revenge against Nick and anyone else who compromised justice.

There are effective moments in Law Abiding Citizen. One of those moments involves a deadly cellphone. Another is an unexpected use of a T-bone. Both moments are explosively violent, more in the vein of a horror film than your average action thriller. These violent moments are far more interesting than Clyde's exceptionally contrived gambits of revenge.

Let's just say don't piss off a gadget guy with unlimited funds and the muscled physique of Gerard Butler. Speaking of Mr. Butler, why do movies insist on having Butler speak with an American accent? He can't do it. He sounds ridiculous and having his natural accent would do nothing to change the character. If producers somehow think this mumbling American accent makes him more relatable, their very wrong. Indeed, it's quite off-putting.

Jamie Foxx is desperately miscast in Law Abiding Citizen. Restraining every comic instinct he has, Foxx deadens his natural charisma in favor of a stoic arrogance that damn near makes Butler's psycho look appealing in comparison. Much of the plot rides on Foxx's Nick being an egotistical idiotic who simply cannot admit when he's wrong. If that sounds thrilling to you, or at all compelling, maybe you'll like this movie.

I hated much of this movie. Aside from the brief, violent flourishes, Law Abiding Citizen is a slow witted, predictable action thriller that replaces nerve and guts with arrogance and psychosis. That may work for the direct to DVD market but I want more out of my theater ticket.

Movie Review Girls Trip

Girls Trip (2017) 

Directed by Malcolm D. Lee 

Written by Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver 

Starring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Lorenz Tate 

Release Date July 21st, 2017 

The trailer for Girls Trip made the film look like a nightmare. With a heavy focus on raunchy, gross-out body humor and the most simplistic gloss of #GirlPower, the trailer makes the movie look like a borderline minstrel show of black women. Before you get mad at my glib deconstruction of the trailer and my incendiary language, please try to understand that I am setting the stage to turn around and tell you how much I genuinely enjoyed the movie Girls Trip.

The trailer is bad, there is no question about that, and it is made up of scenes from the film which aren’t all that manipulated from their filmic context. But it’s also just a trailer. It’s just two and a half minutes, and it’s not the job of the trailer to tell us who these characters are. The trailer is a broad brush of the story of Girls Trip, and while it is a genuinely terrible broad brush, having now seen the film I can say that I get the trailer even as I don’t like the trailer.

Here’s the story: a successful, Martha Stewart/Kelly Ripa-esque woman, Ryan Pierce, played by Regina Hall, is on the verge of accomplishing all her Oprah-like ambition. Alongside her remarkably handsome, former football player husband, think Tiki Barber crossed with Michael Strahan, played by Mike Colter, she is close to building her empire. But, as you can imagine, and because this is a movie, her life is not all that it seems on its serenely beautiful surface.

This comes to light when Ryan is set to be honored by Essence Magazine in New Orleans and Ryan decides this is the perfect opportunity to reunite with her wacky college friends, then known as the Flossy Posse (I missed what that referred to, otherwise I would try to explain the name). They are Sasha (Queen Latifah), a former journalist turned celebrity gossip hound, Lisa (Jada Pinkett-Smith), the mom of the group, and Dina (Tiffany Haddish), the wild child-troublemaker of the group with a mouth that would make Seth Rogan blush.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Little

Little (2019) 

Directed by Tina Gordon 

Written by Tracy Oliver, Tina Gordon

Starring Issa Rae, Regina Hall, Marsai Martin, Tone Bell, Mikey Day 

Release Date April 12th, 2019 

Published April 12th, 2019 

Little is a complete mess! This comedic reversal of the dynamic from the seminal 80’s comedy Big, is so undercooked I became more than a little nauseous while watching it. Little is a remarkably sloppy movie that repeatedly muddies what should be a simple notion of a plot. Take the protagonist and put them in a strange, fish out of water scenario, in order to learn an important lesson about being a better person through being kinder and more open hearted, realize the error of their ways and all is well in the world. This isn’t rocket science, so why did the makers of Little screw it up so bad?

Little stars Regina Hall as Jordan, a tech mogul… I think. Jordan’s business doesn’t make sense. She develops apps but then she has a client for whom she develops apps or games or… this is a good example of the sloppiness I mentioned earlier. Jordan is the boss from hell to her assistant April (Issa Rae) as we learn when April wakes up in the morning to Jordan screaming on the phone about how her slippers are more than 53 inches from her bed forcing her to stretch to reach them. Solid establishment of Jordan’s crazy and part of the lesson the character should learn or would learn if Little were a good movie.

The film goes hard after girl power-girlboss puffery and then badly subverts it. Jordan is all about how she did everything on her own and is an independent mogul. And then the script assigns her a client character, an overgrown man-child, who bosses Jordan around and controls her company with his whims. When he decides he may leave for another firm… again this company makes apps, they’re not a marketing firm(?), she is forced to grovel to keep him. The movie spends time establishing Jordan’s independent cred and then immediately upends that persona because the plot needs a pseudo-villain. Why wasn’t Jordan a villain enough on her own?

Quick question? How is Jordan a great businesswoman and developer if her entire company rides on the whim of one dopey white guy? Where is the empowerment and girlbossery in that? Worse yet, and to really underline the point, the movie doesn’t even need this plot. When we reach the end of the movie, this plot does not matter in any way. This adds nothing to the movie as the whole plot could easily exist without the d-bag white guy character.

So, with the company on the line in a dreadful plot twist, we watch Jordan emotionally and physically abuse her staff in a meeting. After the meeting, as the shell-shocked subordinates slink away, Jordan is confronted by someone who doesn’t work for her, a little girl with a magic wand. The little girl points her wand at Jordan and wishes for her to be little so the girl could stand up to her on behalf of her put upon staff.

The following morning, Jordan once again cannot reach her slippers. She’s been shrunk back to her 12 year old self, an afro-puff wearing, bespectacled, waif, played by Blackish star Marsei Martin. She’s still Jordan, she’s still bullying and arrogant but now in the body of a 12 year old girl. She manages to convince April of what is going on and the convoluted plot then magically introduces Rachel Dratch in a cameo as a DCFS worker who orders that Jordan go to school.

The plot is just sort of forced around into Jordan going to her old Junior High School where she was once bullied terribly. The journey is supposedly now about Jordan overcoming the trauma that turned her into an unfeeling monster but the comic driving force of the movie is Martin as mini-Jordan being as bitchy and extreme as adult Jordan, but as a child so where does the lesson come in?

It gets worse when Jordan befriends a group of unpopular kids and turns them into status obsessed, Instagram addicts and urges them not to be themselves. Now the plot for a time becomes a slobs versus snobs comedy with Jordan eager to turn her ragtag nerd friends into a hot new clique and showing up the school bully, a fellow status obsessed pre-teen, cheerleader. The lesson of this plot is the way to beat a bully is to be a better looking, more popular form of bully.

Eventually, we are to assume that Jordan has learned a lesson because she allows herself to have fun with her new friends. She’s still bratty and status obsessed but because the plot wills it, she now cares for and respects April. Issa Rae meanwhile, has all the comic charm in the world and is relegated to the sidelines while the kids plot plays out from a seemingly separate movie. April’s self confidence arc, wanting to move from assistant to exec by creating her own app, is more throwaway nonsense that further muddles whatever business Jordan is running.

There is a thoughtlessness that reigns throughout Little. There is no care for any detail. There is no interest in making simple changes to the plot to make it make sense. Instead, the film barrels forward, detouring into simpleminded aspects of overly familiar plots before tumbling back somewhere near the original point of the movie. Little is irksome in how ridiculously clumsy every turn of plot is.

Regina Hall and Issa Rae deserve better than this mess of a rehash of Big. These are two exceptionally talented people who could be making incredible things and instead dedicated their time to a movie that completely let them down. It’s not their fault, they did what they could with this nonsense. I blame the filmmakers whose lack of care with the details of plot and their simpleminded dedication to familiar tropes that led them to make an absolute ugly mess of something should have worked.

Movie Review If Beale Street Could Talk

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) 

Directed by Barry Jenkins 

Written by Barry Jenkins 

Starring Stephen James, Kiki Layne, Regina Hall, Colman Domingo 

Release Date December 14th, 2018 

Published December 10th, 2018

If Beale Street Could Talk is one of the best movies of 2018. This deeply affecting drama from the director of the Academy Award winning Moonlight, Barry Jenkins, is one of the most human and thoughtful films about life, love, and race we’ve seen in some time. Jenkins, adapting the work of the late, brilliant author James Baldwin, having cultural renaissance with this movie and last year’s documentary on his life, I Am Not Your Negro, gets to the heart of the cultural experience of racism like few films ever have. 

If Beale Street Could Talk tells the story of a young couple in love, Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephen James). Tish and Fonny have known each other since before they could remember. Their earliest memories are of baths together at an age when sex was merely a gender. They’ve spent their entire lives falling in love until finally they are old enough to understand it. Unfortunately, for their love story, they are torn apart by hatred. 

We meet Fonny when he is behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. We will come to know what happened but for the earliest part of the film we must trust that Trish’s entreaties about how she is working to get him out of jail center on his innocence. Just as important however, as Fonny’s incarceration is the news that Tish is pregnant. At just 19 years old and with Fonny behind bars, they are going to be parents. 

Given the circumstances, it falls to Tish to inform their families of their situation. Tish’s mother Sharon (Regina Hall) is practical but also loving and deeply compassionate. Her father, Joseph (Colman Domingo) is unpredictable but deeply loyal. The trouble comes from Fonny’s divorced parents, the deeply devout Mrs Hunt (Aunjanue Ellis) and her hustler ex-husband Frank (Michael Beach) who is prepared to do anything for his son, if only to make up for having been an absent father. 

That’s the set up of sorts but the heart of If Beale Street Could Talk is not in a linear narrative but in the flashback structure that builds brilliantly toward the reveal of how Fonny ended up in jail and how that reflects the moment in which the film is set, the early 1970’s in Harlem and how that reflects on America in 2018. At that time, it was as if all young black men in Harlem had to spend time in jail by some predetermination of racist police activity. It’s as if it was merely Fonny’s turn and that seeming inevitability is devastating.

The incredible Bryan Tyree Henry plays a supporting role in If Beale Street Could Talk as Daniel, an old friend of Fonny’s. We come to know Daniel’s story of having similarly been recently in jail and his story provides a gut-wrenching prologue to what is lurking in Fonny’s near future. Daniel could provide an alibi for Fonny in the crime he is accused of but his recent stint in jail is seen as disqualifying of his credibility and an awful cycle of such things emerges to deepen the tragedy. 

I’m painting a bleak picture of If Beale Street Could Talk but the film is not entirely what I have described. Much of what I mentioned here is subtext, the front of the story, the bulk of the narrative and the beauty of If Beale Street Could Talk is the remarkably poetic and thrilling love story between Fonny and Tish. Much like the story of how Fonny ends up in jail, director Barry Jenkins layers in the love story of Fonny and Tish using flashbacks to the beauty, innocence and romance of their burgeoning love story. 

If Beale Street Could Talk contains one of the best, if not the absolute BEST scene in any movie in 2018. Having just looked at an apartment together and Fonny having charmed Tish into taking a risk with him on a place that isn’t quite finished being built, the two walk down the street holding hands and basking in the moment. It’s an almost wordless scene, gracefully filmed and knowing that this is the scene that immediately precedes how Fonny ended up in jail only serves to underline the beauty of the moment. It’s a perfect scene, gorgeously cinematic, heart fluttering romantic and haunting. 

The score also underlines the perfection of this moment. Composer Nicholas Britell’s gorgeous string symphony is at its most moving and evocative in this moment. It’s one of the finest moments of score and image that I have seen in any movie in a long while and it was this moment that made me completely fall in love with If Beale Street Could Talk, a film that combines image, story and sound in breathtaking fashion. 

If Beale Street Could Talk is a masterpiece, a lyrical, lovely, exceptionally acted masterpiece. Stephen James, Kiki Layne, Regina Hall and Colman Domingo deliver perfect performances and director Barry Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton capture the performances in immaculate fashion. Few films in 2018, and indeed, the last decade or so, have moved me as deeply as If Beale Street Could Talk. 

Movie Review Support the Girls

Support the Girls (2018) 

Directed by Andrew Bujalski

Written by Andrew Bujalski

Starring Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Shayna McHayle, A.J Michalka

Release Date August 24th, 2018

Published October 10th, 2018

Support the Girls stars the brilliant Regina Hall as Lisa, the fed up manager of a Hooters-esque sports bar in some nameless California strip mall. Lisa has played den mother to a core group of waitresses for a few years now, including Maci (Haley Lu Richardson) and Danyelle (Shayna McHayle), among others. Lately, Lisa has grown fully weary of the place where she works. The pay isn’t great, the boss, played by James LeGros, is a jerk and even her girls are becoming a bit of a pain. 

On this day that we are watching unfold in Support the Girls things have begun in a most trying fashion. Krista (A.J Michalka) has dumped her boyfriend and is having a serious legal problem and no money to help her get out of trouble. She’s going to stay at Lisa’s house while Lisa figures out a way to help her. Krista will be at Lisa’s alongside Lisa’s husband, who has recently lost his job and has become shiftless and depressed. 

When Lisa arrives at the restaurant she finds the place has been broken into and the thief is trapped in the ceiling. In climbing into the ceiling, the thief has taken out the cable so now she has a sports bar with no sports and a big fight tonight that is supposed to bring in a big crowd. At the very least, Lisa does get an idea to help Krista, she’s going to do a charity car wash with the help of a group of eager young applicants who showed up for job interviews that Lisa forgot about. 

The car wash will need to come off without her boss, Cubby (LeGros) finding out about it, meaning no social media push. She also needs to come up with a fake charity because if people know it’s just for some girls' legal defense they may not be sympathetic. The problems continue to mount both big and small including Maci spending too much time with an old man customer and Danyelle lacking child care and thus bringing her son to work with her. 

None of these situations that Lisa is dealing with are particularly funny in and of themselves but as they add up, one after another after another, there is a compelling narrative that always keeps your attention. Regina Hall is a wonderful actress, endlessly sympathetic and when she’s fed up, you feel it and you can’t help but be in that moment with her. Her bickering with LeGros’ Cubby has a nasty quality to it with an edge that tells you perhaps she’s going to be fired at any moment. 

That sparky kind of tension is perhaps the real driving force of Support the Girls. Throughout the movie these types of sparky if not flat out, fiery exchanges bubble up and kick the plot forward. Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria is in the movie as a tough talking customer who feels a deep protectiveness toward the girls and isn’t afraid to throw down if someone is getting out of line. Delaria keeps amping up tensions in each of her scenes and she is incredibly fun to watch. 

Haley Lu Richardson is a complete doll as the endlessly chipper Maci. Maci is the party starter, the sexy chick who is both putting on an act and living that act. Credit to Richardson, and to screenwriter and director Andrew Bujalski, for never settling on Maci’s stereotypical qualities. She takes the flirting with the old man customer story to a place of genuine, unexpected pathos in a scene that really made me smile. 

Smiles are the par for the course of Support the Girls. The film isn’t big on drama or comedy. It’s a slice of Life movie that consistently engages via smart and charming characters and lead performance by Regina Hall that you can’t resist rooting for. The film isn’t perfect but it will make you happy for the most part. Support the Girls achieves very modest goals of being engaging and charming if not deeply artful, moving or laugh out loud hilarious. 

Movie Review: Death at a Funeral

Death at a Funeral (2010) 

Directed by Neil Labute 

Written by Dean Craig 

Starring Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Loretta Devine, Regina Hall, Zoe Saldana, Luke Wilson

Release Date April 16th, 2010 

Published April 16th, 2010 

Director Neil Labute has a terrific eye for human behavior. It's a very particular and often quite dim view of humanity that lead to brutal yet insightful films like In the Company of Men and his magnum opus of anger and inhumanity Your Friends and Neighbors. Yet, there is also a brilliantly whimsical side to the director of the dark side of humanity.

In Nurse Betty Neil Labute took the cute as a button Renee Zellweger and had her play a woman who falls in love with a soap opera character following a psychotic break brought on by witnessing the violent murder of her brutish husband. From there begins a road picture and a strangely romantic and wondrous performance from Morgan Freeman as the killer who falls for Betty from afar. 

The strange comic sensibilities of Nurse Betty were a turn off for many audiences but for me it was a remarkable insight into a filmmaker who is tuned to a very different wavelength than most other filmmakers or other human beings in general. It is this quality that makes Neil Labute perfect for the new comedy Death at a Funeral. What other director could find so much wacky fun at a funeral? 

Chris Rock stars in Death at a Funeral as Aaron the oldest son of a family that just lost its patriarch. Aaron is a tax attorney who longs to be a novelist and lives in the shadow of his slightly younger brother Ryan (Martin Lawrence) a successful writer of trashy novels. This however is the least of Aaron's troubles as he has his wife Michelle (Regina Hall) pushing to have a baby and his mother Cynthia (Loretta Devine) constantly on the verge of a meltdown.

Oh and then there is the issue of the funeral home delivering the wrong body. Yikes! Among the funeral guests are Aaron's cousin Elaine (Zoe Saldana) and her boyfriend Oscar (James Marsden) who dreads seeing Elaine's father (Ron Glass) who has made it clear how much he hates Oscar. They are joined by Elaine's brother Jeff (Columbus Short) a minor drug dealer whose pill concoction is set to make trouble at the funeral.

Family friend Norman (Tracey Morgan) and his pal Derek (Luke Wilson) each have a different purpose at the funeral. Norman is helping out by bringing cranky Uncle Russell (Danny Glover) to the funeral while Derek will be seeking out Elaine with whom he has a romantic past that he hopes to rekindle. 

And then there is a mystery guest. Peter Dinklage plays Frank, the same role he played in the original British version of Death at a Funeral in 2007. Frank holds the key to a major subplot that drives the middle portion of the film to a wild climax that though it comes up a little short by being too easy, does not fail so completely as to sink the whole film. 

Death at a Funeral brilliantly builds comic momentum from the opening scenes involving the wrong body in the casket to the reveal of Frank's secret to Oscar's wild drug infused ride to finally sitting everyone down for the actual funeral. It's remarkable how Labute keeps all of these comic plates spinning and pays off each set piece with a big, big laugh. 

The cast of Death at a Funeral is first rate with Marsden stealing scene after scene with his acid trip wackiness while Chris Rock grounds the film by bringing the craziness back to earth with exasperated truthfulness. Rock is used to driving the comedy by prodding the actors around him with his in your face style. Here, Rock is more relaxed than ever before and it suits him. He may not be pushing the edges but his punchlines are just as strong. 

Neil Labute worked from a script that is credited to original Death at a Funeral writer Dean Craig. Indeed the characters, set pieces and other aspects of the story are almost entirely unchanged from the 2007 film. What is different is the perspective Labute and his cast brings to the picture. There is more willingness by all involved to explore the black comedy side (not a racial observation) of a story that is after all a comedy set at a funeral. 

Especially interesting is the exploration of gay panic, something that in African American circles is an especially touchy subject. This part will contain spoilers so skip to the last paragraph if you hate spoilers, Rock and Lawrence in the film's main plot deftly balance horror, acceptance and humor at the prospect of their father's homosexuality. I would have liked to see a little more attention paid to this subject, it's wrapped up a little too neatly in Rock's closing speech, but overall well handled and bold for merely being in the movie. 

Death at a Funeral is wacky and smart, slapsticky but with an eye for the laughs that don't involve bodies being dumped out of caskets. I could have done without the gross-out moments with Tracey Morgan and Danny Glover, which I will not detail here, but it's not so horrible that it ruins the film. Nor does the relatively comfy wrap up at the film’s end take away from the big laughs and wonderful discomfort of Death at a Funeral.

Movie Review Scary Movie 4

Scary Movie 4 (2006) 

Directed by David Zucker

Written by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Craig Mazin, Pat Proft 

Starring Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, Bill Pullman, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Hart, Charlie Sheen

Release Date April 14th, 2006 

Published April 16th, 2006 

Comedy is harder than it looks. Just look at how often Hollywood fails to make audiences laugh in films designated as "Comedies". It's subjective and often intractable and what is funny to one person is not funny to someone else. Comedy in and of itself is an act of bravery.

With that said, Scary Movie 4 is funny. It's not however as consistently funny as spoof predecessors like Airplane, Hot Shots or Naked Gun. The targets are safe, the laughs are extremely broad and the potshots miss as often as they hit. At the very least it is a vast improvement over the terribly unfunny Scary Movie 3.

Anna Faris returns for a 4th time as ditzy, dimbulb heroine Cindy Campbell who has, thus far in the series, seen more humiliating moments than every Ben Stiller character combined. This time around Cindy is dealing with the loss of her husband George (Simon Rex) in a tragic stool accident, a spotty Million Dollar Baby parody involving Mike Tyson in drag.

Cindy has just accepted a job as an in-home nurse in the home of a comatose woman (poor Cloris Leachman) who's being haunted by the creepy little asian kid from The Grudge.

Next door to the coma patient's house is Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko) , a construction worker and weekend dad to two kids. Ryan is straight out of War of The Worlds and he soon discovers aliens on the attack inside of a giant Ipod. Just as Tom and Cindy's relationship is beginning they are split up, he into an ongoing WOTW parody and Cindy along with returning best pal Brenda (Regina Hall) into an ill fated parody of The Village.

This is far more plot than was contained in the last Scary Movie and while plot may be superfluous to this franchise it helps root the parodies in something and makes the jokes funnier.

Another new element to the Scary Movie franchise is a dash of social satire in the person of Leslie Neilsen as the attled President of the United States. In a somewhat darkly humorous take off of President Bush's my pet duck moment on 9/11, Neilsen's Mr. President refuses to react to the alien Ipod attack until he hears what happened to the duck in a story told by small children. And naturally where Leslie Neilsen goes so goes broad physical humor, turn your head so you miss a brief shot of Mr. Neilsen's naked ass.

The films parodied well in Scary Movie 3 include War Of The Worlds and The Grudge and a surprisingly inoffensive and humorous take on Brokeback Mountain. Not so strong however are taxes on Million Dollar Baby and The Village. The problem with The Village is that M. Night Shyamalan's first major screw up is not all that well remembered. The film never really had its cultural moment and most audiences have forgotten the fake village and its olde timey denizens. When the biggest laughs are garnered by Carmen Electra on the toilet it's a clear sign that there wasn't much to work with in a Village parody.

I nearly forgot to mention a surprisingly funny parody of Saw starring the oddball pair of Shaquille O'Neal and Dr. Phil. While jokes about Shaq's free throw shooting are about as timely as Jay Leno's monologue circa 2002, Dr. Phil's highly self-effacing performance draws some big laughs and more than a few uncomfortable truths about the doctor's methods. Both Shaq and Dr. Phil are such genial sports that the scenes get a nice jolt from their positive energy.

Avoid reading any interviews with Director David Zucker who spoils some of the fun of Scary Movie 4 with a bitter streak that becomes clearer in the film upon reflection. Zucker has nothing nice to say about any of the movies parodied in Scary Movie 4 including the multiple Oscar winning Brokeback Mountain.

His comments give a nasty edge to the parodies that do not come through in the sweetness and light performances of Anna Faris, Craig Bierko and Anthony Anderson who returns from Scary Movie 3 and enlivens the Brokeback scenes. Faris needs to branch out beyond comedy soon to break her current type casting but she continues to be the one real draw of this aging franchise. As for Bierko, simply turn a camera on this guy and he's funny. Effortlessly humorous and energetic, he actually made me, an ardent fan of Tom Cruise, laugh hard through an extended parody of Cruise's couch jumping antics on Oprah.

Hit and miss at times but a great improvement over the last outing, I am recommending Scary Movie 4 for fans of spoofs and of this franchise. Fans of Brokeback Mountain, maybe you want to save your seven bucks.

Movie Review Malibu's Most Wanted

Malibu's Most Wanted (2003) 

Directed by John Whitesell 

Written by Jamie Kennedy, Nick Swardson 

Starring Jamie Kennedy, Taye Diggs, Anthony Anderson, Blair Underwood, Regina Hall, Bo Derek, Snoop Dogg 

Release Date April 18th, 2003 

Published April 16th, 2003 

I don't want to be mean but for the life of me I can't figure out what Jamie Kennedy has done to earn an over the title credit on a feature film. His career is dotted by a number of direct to video comedies like the dreadful Sol Goode and strange thrillers like Pretty When You Cry opposite Sam Elliott. Huh? He can't still be riding his minuscule success as the film geek in Scream 1 & 2.

It likely stems from the inexplicable success of his TV show, “The Jamie Kennedy Experience.” I use the term success loosely as it's difficult calling any show on the WB network a success. The show which incorporates sketch comedy and warmed over Tom Green street pranks appeals to teenage boys well enough that it makes sense that a marketer might pick up on Kennedy and see a product he can sell. That still doesn't quite explain how Malibu's Most Wanted made it to the big screen but nevertheless here it is.

Kennedy is B-Rad or really just Brad Gluckman, the son of a millionaire candidate for California governor (Ryan O'Neal). Brad fancies himself a gangsta based on his love of the stereotypical culture portrayed in so-called gangsta rap. B-Rad has just returned home to help his dad's campaign by helping to attract black people to the campaign. Brad's ingenious ideas include interrupting a live press conference with a horrible rap and appealing to a conference with female voters with a sign that states "Bill Gluckman is down with the Bitches and the Ho's).

Sensing that Brad is a liability to the campaign, Dad and his campaign advisor (Blair Underwood) conspire to cure Brad of his poseur ways. The idea is to hire a pair of black actors to abduct Brad and teach him what the gangsta lifestyle is really like. As Underwood's character puts it, they will "scare the black out of him.”

The campaign hires Sean (Taye Diggs) and P.J (Anthony Anderson) to play the gangstas. Unfortunately, neither actor knows anything about the hood. In turn, they hire PJ's cousin Shondra (Regina Hall) to help them learn what the hood is like so they can scare Brad.

Everything goes to plan as Sean and P.J kidnap Brad with Shondra as bait and bring him to Shondra's house in what was formerly known as South Central Los Angeles. Sean and P.J play up gangster personas all the while complimenting each other on how authentic their characters are. Diggs and Anderson are the film's main assets and provide the only solid laughs.

The set up works only in short spurts and only in the scenes with Diggs and Anderson who are so good at times they make Kennedy seem like a co-star in his own movie. Indeed a film taken from Sean and PJ's perspective would have been far funnier than what we get in Malibu's Most Wanted. At about the one hour mark of the 80 minute movie, Sean and P.J are shoved into the background in favor of Brad's forced love story with Shondra and another kidnapping, this time by a real gangsta named Tec (Damien Dante Wayans). It is then that Malibu's Most Wanted loses what little humor it generates.

Taye Diggs is one of the smartest actors working today. Sadly, like Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt, his good looks often prevent people from taking his talent seriously. Because of his boy toy role in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Diggs will forever be typecast in the role of eye candy for drawing women into theaters. This obscures his work which in films as varied as the cheesy horror sendup House On Haunted Hill to the hip hop romance Brown Sugar has shown great wit and an ability to play off of anyone and hold his own. Most recently, Diggs had a terrific guest turn on the TV show “Ed” where he played himself, or rather what Ed thought Taye Diggs would be like if he met him in person.

You could call early 2003 the year of uncomfortable racial humor. There’s been Steve Martin and Queen Latifah in the tepid Bringing Down The House, Chris Rock's caustic political satire Head Of State and now Malibu's Most Wanted. Only Head Of State manages to do something with its racial content with Rock skewing racism from all sides. Bringing Down The House wants to satirize white stereotypes of black culture but lacks the courage to break from a sitcom formula to take on the subject. Malibu's Most Wanted is even less successful because it lacks the insight into Brad's identity to either portray it sympathetically or skewer satirically. Kennedy seems to want it both ways. He wants the audience to sympathize with Brad and also laugh at his over the top antics.

The elements of the sketch comedy character that B-Rad was conceived from don't translate to an 80-minute feature, and without a perspective, either sympathetic or satiric, you’re left with nothing but a confused character and audience. What this film says about Jamie Kennedy as a viable movie star is very little. The marketing campaign may lure people to theaters but the film itself will leave them wondering why they wasted the time to see it.