Hey folks, Harry here... with POOTIE TANG... Well slap my jaws and color me dumb, cuz I am not up with the whole Pootie Tang lingo thang. I know about TOSSING THE SALAD and the Goosing Slum and the Wolf-Bagging and of course the Quint special... SQUANCHING... But I do not know what a Pootie Tang is... Only that it concerns Chris Rock.... read on...
And, now, the promised non-spoiler review of Pootie Tang. I know you've all been waiting for more information on this very important film. This review is based off of a rough cut of the film...I don't have a release date for this film.
Here is the setup. HSX.com: "Based on a character from The Chris Rock show, Pootie is a crime fighter and recording artist who speaks indecipherable English and is a role model and hero to children. Pootie must go up against Dick Lecter. the CEO of a huge corporation who tried to get little kids to buy his products, which include cigarettes, alcohol, and fast food." C.K. Louis wrote this long skit of a film, and he directed it too.
So the guy sez to me and mine, "You wanna see a free Pootie Tang tonight?" Stops me dead in my tracks, as I try to figure out what language the man is using on me. Pootie Tang. Until today, I'd never heard of this character from the Chris Rock show. I like and respect Chris Rock, he and his writers have delivered some good laughs and a bit of truth into the world. But I've got a dirty secret...I'm one of the few people in Hollywood that doesn't have HBO, leaving me Sopronos-deprived. Oh my. Well, you can't expect the audience for this movie to know Pootie Tang either.
Overall
I can't recommend that you see this film in theaters. Unless you just absolutly adore urban black humor and can't get enough of the repeats of In Living Colour on your telly.
Story
This movie tries to be a parody of superhero stories. Pootie Tang has a weakness, and a semi-backstory for why he fights crime. He doesn't even have a sidekick. The fight scene at the end was lame...I suspect that this will be somewhat fixed by the time the editing and post-prod is done. But there were no specialty fighters...think Superman 2 or Big Trouble in Little China. Instead, every fighter was a silly croucher...think Mighty Morphon Power Rangers the TV show. Sad.
Well, this is a comedy. Did people laugh? Sure, OK, they laughed. No side splitters. Just laughs here and there, just like a skit.
Characters
Bad guys. These guys show up in the beginning of the film as drug dealers, disappear for a while, and then one of them shows up at the end, and then disappears again! What happened to these dudes? When they were on screen, people laughed loudly. Did they not show up on the day of shooting? Did someone lose pages 40, 62, and 78 of the script?
Superbad guys. Comedian Dave Attell is wasted as the corporate henchman. Robert Vaughn phones it in as evil CEO. No emotions at all. Keep reading those cue cards.
Superbad girlfriend. Played by a scary lady...I've seen her before, but couldn't find her name on IMDB. Whenever she was on the big screen, the audience tried to take a step back...not a good thing. She's kinda scary - bad - weird looking. She didn't get laughs, she got winces. "Eeewww."
Girlfriend. Played very well by Wanda Sykes. Her 'thing' was to look like a neon ho while dancing all the time like Rosie Perez in the beginning of Do the Right Thing. Hip shaking performance that got good laughs.
Good guy posse. They didn't move the story along at all. They simply remarked on what was going on. "Oooh, Pootie's hot with the ladies."
"Oooh, Pootie's not doing too good now." "Oooh."
And finally, Pootie Tang. He was an interesting character, but I would rather see a great 10-minute skit on him than this movie. He looks like a young Bille Dee, has the sex thang down like Prince, struts like J.J. Walker, and speaks urban gibberish like the occasional Busta Rhymes interview. But 90 minutes is too long to sustain him alone. For a superhero, he had NO EMOTION and NO CHOICES in the story at all. The bad guys simply put him in one place to another place. I can't empathize with a protagonist that has no emotion or choices throughout a whole 90 minutes of film, even in a comedy.
Direction.
For a rather new director, this looked good. The pacing was good, and the editing was fresh. The voiceover by one of Pootie's posse was supposed to be a joke at points, but it was WAY overdone. Cut back a bit on that, and it won't make it look like your are working hard for the comedy. Otherwise, good work. Keep on improving, and I'll see your films, as long as the story and characters get much, much better.
HSX.com currently has this making $24 million within 1 month of its release. That sounds about right. But, hell, Down to Earth made $51 mil in its first month, so what the fuck do I know?
Cheers,
--Caller From L.A.
