BEFORE: Marlon Wayans carries over from "The Ladykillers" for this spoof of urban crime films.
THE PLOT: We follow Ashtray as he returns to the place he grew up and meet his father and his basket-case friends.
AFTER: I should really call a mulligan on this one, because I haven't seen any of the films that it's riffing on, like "Menace II Society" and "Boyz in the Hood" - they're not really my scene, and I'm not in their target audience anyway.
I tried to take the film at face value anyway, but without any cultural reference points, none of the jokes really landed. It would be like trying to watch "Airplane" if you'd never seen the "Airport" films or "Blazing Saddles" if you'd never seen a Western before.
Even with that, I'm not sure the culture of the 'hood, with drive-by shootings and gangs and drugs, is an appropriate place to find humor. This has been a topic of debate for me recently - whether humor can be mined out of tragedy. Certainly Mel Brooks did it in "The Producers" and "To Be or Not to Be", but not only was he not making direct fun of Hitler, only through an actor playing Hitler on stage, but he sort of had a right to poke fun at the Holocaust merely by being Jewish. In the same way, African-American actors can send up black culture in a way that white people can't. In any instance, it takes a pretty deft hand to do so.
Well, it's off my list, I watched it even though I didn't really enjoy it. Moving on...
Also starring Shawn Wayans, Tracey Cherelle Jones, Chris Spencer, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Kim Wayans, Vivica A. Fox (last seen in "Kill Bill: Vol. 2"), with cameos from Omar Epps (last seen in "The Mod Squad"), Bernie Mac (last seen in "Head of State"), Faizon Love (last heard in "Zookeeper"), Antonio Fargas.
RATING: 2 out of 10 bottles of malt liquor
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