Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
No, seriously. The one and only Vern has returned with a new review of the seemingly in-limbo animated film, LI’L PIMP. Dig in:
Howdy boys,
Dark days have descended upon the Vern compound here in the bright blue upper left corner of the American map, and they hit me like a basketball to the nose. Just sitting here naively preparing for one of them ewok celebrations they used to have. Fireworks shootin off everywhere, a bunch of little dudes dancing around playing drums on Homeland Security helmets. I was high off publishing my first book and was feeling real optimistic. I felt the world was gonna change for the better and I looked fondly forward to the future, to a day when my fellow countrymen and women could hold their heads high and swell their chests with pride. Also to BLADE 3 next month.
Then, not sure what happened, somewhere around November 2nd or 3rd I just plunged into a bottomless funk. Not the good Clyde Stubblefield kind. The bad kind, where you're sad and crap. The kind where you stumble around aimlessly and start behaving strangely. Maybe you watch GARFIELD and write a bizarre, rambling essay about it, to name one example. Who knows what could happen while you are in this state of the blues.
(GARFIELD is a movie about a freaky looking mutant asshole cat that complains all the time and steals people's food.)
Then as if that wasn't a big enough bummer, that rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard died. I'm an old man, I don't usually follow that type of thing, but that dude was the craziest motherfucker in music. He was a genius. I loved reading stories about that guy. Remember the time he ran from the hospital after he got shot, and nobody could figure out why? Or the time he escaped from rehab, suddenly he's on stage with the Wu-Tang Clan, does a couple songs and says, ”Y’all know they had the ODB locked down, right? Well, I’m here to tell you that they can’t keep me down. Now I’m free, and I’m out there like a bird flying around, so y’all better leave some birdseed on your windowsills, because I may be flying by your house.” I'm sure other people are eulogizing him better so I'll just say Mr. Bastard, I'm leaving some birdseed on the windowsill for you there bud.
Anyway, all this gloom and doom, what you gotta do is find something real good to cheer you up. Unfortunately, nothing good was available. So I watched a cartoon called LIL' PIMP.
LIL' PIMP is a new animated cartoon type feature about a lonely little 9 year old white boy, raised by a single mother. He has no friends or male role models, so he hangs out with hookers, etc. It's the story of "how a little boy from Pine Cone Heights saved the pimpin' game." The animatin I guess is done with the "flash" computer program, so it is real simple, thick line drawings, but pretty nicely designed. Not as ugly as some of the shit the kids like now, though not good enough that it would've worked on the big screen. Luckily it's going straight to video oblivion.
I'll be charitable man, this movie is not terrible. But it's not that good either. It's mildly amusing, like some failed MTV cartoon pilot stretched out to feature length. It's kind of a parody of cartoon cliches I guess, 'cause the kid has a talking animal and he learns lessons from the wise pimp Fruit Juice (Bernie Mac) who uses magic "pimp glitter" and gets set up by an evil mayor (William Shatner). And it has other celebrity voices, like Carmen Electra as Honeysack and Danny Bonaduce who plays a bathroom pervert called Nasty Midget.
The rapper Ludacris plays a perverted talking weasel type animal named Weathers. He does a pretty good job, but I don't know man. I'm not sure about watching a cartoon ferret or whatever he is fondling human boobs. That ain't natural, man. Gay people can't get married but a fucking weasel can grab a gal's boobs. I don't get it. I mean what is he even planning to do to this gal, I can't figure out how it would even work.
The other rapper Li'l Kim is in this one too. You can do anything in animation, so she plays a hooker. She could play a regular sized hooker, a short hooker, anything. The possibilities are endless in this medium. I'm sure her parents are proud.
Bernie Mack keeps your attention as Fruit Juice though, and one of the two directors of the movie does the naive voice of the kid, who says things like "wowee" all the time but is taught how to "turn out a square woman" (his mom). Somebody told me it was "BOBBY'S WORLD meets PIMPS UP HO'S DOWN" whatever the fuck that means.
There is exactly one reason why I watched this movie though, and that reason is Rudy Ray God Damn Moore. That's right, Petey Wheatstraw himself makes a cameo in one scene playing Mr. Slippers, a legendary fashion designer for pimps. It's great to hear his voice in these trying times, and he gets some good lines and rhymes in. When a guy asks him for a Pony sweat suit he yells, "Well I don't sell clothes to motherfuckas who wanna break a sweat!" Then he asks everybody to "dig my crystal fashion ball" which then tells the story of how he made an invisible suit for a guy and a headband for a two-headed "Siamese pimp." Good scene.
And there were other parts that made me laugh, like when William Shatner asks, "Who knew pimping could be so easy?" and then cackles.
But I mean, obviously you can only go so far with this one-joke premise that a little white kid becomes a pimp. And yet they have to stretch it out to the full 80 minutes or whatever so you find them taking it seriously. Oh no, how are the heroic pimps gonna prove that the mayor is going to blow up The Playground, etc.
Pimps are one of those things like mimes and kumquats. People gotta get over them. They're not THAT funny, just 'cause they got a big hat on or something. This movie acts like pimps and hoes don't really do anything, they just stand around and look cool. And hoes aren't afraid of pimps, they're friends, because the pimps don't seem to beat them, threaten them, take their money or even call them bitch very often. This cartoon is too damn cartoonish. In the world of reality, hoes work very hard, get beat up, get strung out, and then the pimp takes their money. There's this fascination with pimps in our culture right now where it's almost acceptable for kids to use the word. Especially after the show PIMP MY RIDE, little kids talk about pimpin now, "Man, you're such a pimp, gimme five!" But it has about as much to do with real pimpin as BONANZA has to do with the old west. Read PIMP: THE STORY OF MY LIFE by Iceberg Slim, or if you're lazy, watch AMERICAN PIMP. You can see it's flamboyant and all that crap, you can see the outlaw appeal, but you also see these are horrible, sadistic assholes that beat women with coathangers and steal their money.
MAN I'm getting old but come on, you make a full length cartoon movie about pimps that doesn't have enough jokes in it, of course my mind's gonna drift and start thinking about this shit.
Bottom line is, these cartoonists are okay, they could probaly do a funny TV show. Or maybe not if they don't have the wisdom to see that this is not a good enough idea for a full length movie. (Didn't American learn anything from OSMOSIS JONES?) But I don't like "south park" or the talking food one or the "family man" with the nutsack on his chin so what do I know, for all I know this shit is hilarious to you kids. Who knows. the end.
thanks boys, I'll try to keep my chin up,
your friend,
p.p.s. nothing against panties though, panties are fine
As always, you’re awesome, man, and it’s a joy.
"Moriarty" out.
