Friday, 2 February 2001

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Talk about your big, fat load of movies!

Meet The Parents (THB 9/27), Get Carter (unavailable for review) and Digimon are the big dogs, opening wide, wide and wider. Requiem for a Dream, Bamboozled and Dancer in the Dark hit a limited number of screens, but seem sure to get the majority of media attention. And Bootmen, Two Family House and YiYi break small on their way to likely former-festival-fodder obscurity. (Though, frankly, I still haven't been to a festival where Bootmen was playing, so...)

If you live in New York or L.A., that's a lotsa movies! If you don't, it's much easier, since Meet The Parents (despite our own Susannah Breslin's scathing review) is the only movie that seems to actually be worth your time. (Like roughcut.com's critic, I'll be trying to catch Get Carter on my own dime this weekend to see why WB is so shy about showing the remake.)

Before I move on, I'd like to call special attention to Andy Klein's work this week on Dancer in the Dark and Bamboozled. There is stuff I agree with and stuff I disagree with in both. But I am proud to be a part of a Website that has the quality of criticism that Andy brought to both pieces this week. Really compelling stuff, that speaks to both sides on two movies that will make people choose sides, whether the work intends to push people that way or not. Make sure to check him out.

Also, make sure to check out the second edition of Civilian Voices on Saturday. The artists-vs-consumers debate will continue there, as will other voices from the gallery (sometimes you feel like a peanut, sometimes you don't).

And don't forget about Box Office Extra. Click back here later today to check it out.

THE GOOD & THE BAD: This section should be called, "The Trouble With Spike," because it's all about Bamboozled today. But, at the same time, suggesting that there is trouble with Spike is wrong. Bamboozled is a movie that people should see.

That said, a filmmaker who came to see the screening with me said it best: Bamboozled is half a great movie. And Bamboozled is half an abuse against the audience, pounding us over the head so many times from so many directions that it makes you feel as though you took out your wallet in front of the wrong New York police squad. (And if you don't get the Diallo reference there, you are probably REALLY going to hate Bamboozled.)

I am in a funny position. I am not one of the people who objected to the ending of Do The Right Thing. I liked the moral ambiguity of that movie. But Do The Right Thing has one thing that Bamboozled doesn't. (That is, besides Rosie Perez bumping and grinding.) It had hope. It allowed for the idea that people could change...people could wipe away some of the blind hatred, if only for short periods of time...that people on both sides were right and wrong and somewhere in between.

As a structural conceit, Bamboozled makes some very smart moves. You will read in almost every review that you laugh early in the movie and then the laughs disappear from the third act. Smart idea. Pull the audience in and then let the hammer loose. I can take it. I want to be made to think and there is no question: Spike Lee commands your thought with the ideas he raises in this movie.

But my objection (and I'm going to keep it close to the vest here, as not to spoil the experience for you) is that no one is ever right. We are all guilty. And, as best I can tell, we all deserve a merciless bashing. The Spike Lee who was abused by some critics for saying, "Wake Up" and "I am Malcolm X" directly and without restraint in School Daze and Malcolm X has withdrawn that kind of hopeful sentiment from this movie. Some characters have turns of conscience that simply don't make sense, as though they were doing an improv and the actor thought they were doing a scene from earlier or later in the movie. Jada Pinkett-Smith, who is as compelling as ever in this film, practically gets whiplash from all her turns. Damon Wayans, who finally gets a chance to act in this movie (as does Tommy Davidson), is a confused character, but not as confused as the audience trying to connect with him. Sell-outs who have good reason to sell out end up destroyed. Opt-ins who are sincerely searching for their "blackness" end up destroyed. There are two characters who serve as fairly positive moral images in the film. One simply disappears after his lecture scene and the other's message is emasculated by his alcoholism.

A group of Internet journalists had an opportunity to talk to Spike on Wednesday and it was an interesting experience. He was very low key and not really interested in pushing the militancy of his vision. He essentially kept saying that his movie was a way of reminding us of the past and provoking a discussion about now and the future. Why is there no hope or any possible answers in the film? It's not the filmmakers responsibility. He seems to be ripping a lot of black entertainers from the past in the movie:"...they didn't really have a choice if they wanted to feed their families," he says in the interview. Is network television better off being light on shows starring black actors or having the kinds of shows that Spike seems to be offended by in my read of the movie? If the only representation of black people on TV are sitcoms...Spike shrugs.

Unlike Dancer in the Dark or Eyes Wide Shut or Fight Club or whatever, Bamboozled is not really a love/hate proposition, in that some people will love it and others will hate it. It's a love/hate movie in and of itself. It's funny and horrible and frustrating and confused and irritating and upsetting and thrilling and original and Xeroxed and dumb and brilliant and an absolute must-see. You may hate me for sending you, but you should go and you should experience it for yourself. And if you are over 21, you should find a bar within walking distance of your home to hang out in afterwards to discuss what just happened to you. It's not Spike Lee's best movie. Far from it. But if you can handle the dive into a cold pool on a hot day, this movie is a jolt worth suffering.