Hey folks, Harry here with the movie that will start a new sex craze across the country... the Ving Rhames, African Squat Fuck (TM pending Rhames' paperwork) And according to this bloke, it seems that Singleton might have finally made a solid directorial serious film effort since BOYZ N THE HOOD, which is good... if true... We need more solid films, especially this year...
I saw a private preview screening at Sony HQ in Gotham last week. The movie is deeply affecting, and may be Singleton's best work.
It's the story of a young man, Jody (Tyrese), who, though he's fathered two children by two different women (his "baby mommas"), still lives with his mother (A.J. Johnson) and doesn't have a job.
As the action of the movie begins, Jody realizes his life is going nowhere, and starts trying to take it seriously, going into business for himself as a booster (selling stolen clothes to women in hair salons and on the street) and taking his woman Yvette (Taraji. P. Henson) more seriously (the number two woman, Peanut, is never a major player, and is a source of comic relief as a too-young, totally self-centered girl). But he's still a baby at heart, and cannot handle at all his mother Juanita starting to have a relationship with a successful ex-con deceptively named Melvin, played with remarkable force, humor, and gravity by Ving Rhames.
Rhames steals the movie with the funniest and scariest scenes, but none of the performers in this well-balanced cast disappoint. Tyrese is suprisingly believable as a man who's just a little bit too smart to fall into being a punk, but too selfish and scared to grow up. Taraji P. Henson breaks out as Jody's love, struggling to be true to both herself and him. A.J. Johnson is sultry, loving, wise, and still young enough to want to be her son's friend as well as mother. Omar Gooding (the younger brother of Cuba, Jr.) is goofily dangerous as Jody's best friend who's just a little too dumb not to be a punk...actually in many ways like George Clooney's cohorts in O, BROTHER. Snoop Dogg has an amusing and menacing cameo as Yvette's former boyfriend Rodney (always pronounced Raaahdney), currently serving time.
The movie is by turns drop-dead funny and torturously wrenching. It is a film that should be watched by pretty much anyone old enough to deal with love and sex, though it will probably only be seen by black people, "ghetto" suburban kids who like hip-hop, and film aficionadoes like the ones at AICN.
There's a lot of booty in this movie, including wide swaths of Ving Rhames and Tyrese, and pretty much all of all of the women. The raw sexuality of the film will, unfortunately, turn off the prudish folk who will happily go send their kids to see a movie which has dismemberment and grenades. The violence of BABY BOY, by contrast, is personal and harsh--far from sexy. The violence of this movie is the violence of terror, and of failure.
It's not perfect, but is above all a FILM, and not just some popcorn movie, however much the trailers make this seem like a sexy hip-hop comedy (though the soundtrack is a stand-out). This movie is the flip side of a cool hip-hop video: you get to see what happens to the characters when they leave the honeys and the chrome and have to go home. There's no easy dividing line between hope and despair in the world of Baby Boy. Some of the "this is the way the world is" monologues fall a bit heavy, but never ring false to the characters. There are a few heavy filmic moments, like the opening scene with Tyrese as a fetus in a giant womb, or flashes of nightmares and dreams, which snap the audience into remembering that this is Singleton's tale. For myself and the audience who saw the preview, it was a tale well told.
--Friend Boy, signing off.
