Okay… bend me over and call me Jo Jo… here’s my first overt pull-quote in a long while…

“Take it from this white boy, Undercover Brother is easily the funniest movie I’ve seen this year.”

What can I tell you? I laughed and I laughed and I laughed some more.  I laughed so much that I was a little embarrassed after a while.  The screenplay, written John Ridley and Mike McCullers (of Austin Powers screenwriting fame), is sensational.  Malcolm D. Lee does a nice job behind the camera, but the screenplay… it’s so good that I am going to go out of my way to track down John Ridley’s only directorial effort, which he also wrote, Cold Around The Heart. 

I thought the idea of Undercover Brother, a Blaxploitation character living in the new millennium, was funny as soon as I saw the promotional calendar that was waiting for me when I got back from Miami in February.  I enjoyed the trailer I saw, but in that smiling-not-laughing kind of way.  Then I saw a TV spot that really made me laugh.  And then one that didn’t.  And then I saw the movie…

The opening moments show us UC’s big old Cadillac convertible, a groovy track blaring… cute.   The big fro… the hipster clothes… cute.  But then, we get a car gag that’s as funny and smart and unexpected as any of the visual gags in Airplane or the Austin Powers series.  It’s not the hardest I laughed in the film or in the films I am comparing it to, but it was a great signpost for a comedy that would prove to be more complex than it seemed on the surface.  The thing about Undercover Brother is that as broad as the humor can be – and it goes way, way over the top – it also gives you subtle stuff, almost hidden in the corners, much as Airplane did.   

One thing about Undercover Brother… it’s non-discriminatory in its willingness to offend.  The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D., an acronym that is never explained, is fighting “The Man” a.k.a The White Man, who is personified by one guy who lives in shadow, never seen.   And we get a comedic spin on virtually every stereotype that you can imagine.  White men can’t dance or sing or eat or satisfy their women.  Black men want white women, put hot sauce on anything, smoke pot and LOVE fried chicken.  And I’m just scratching the surface.

Besides the primary cast of Sistah Girl, Conspiracy Brother, Smart Brother and The Chief, played by Chi McBride with a photo of Bernie Casey looking over his shoulder, there is Billy Dee Williams as a Colin Powell character who gives up his shot at the presidency to sell chicken, Neil Patrick Harris aka Doogie Hauser, as an too-white intern at The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. and Chris Kattan as an operative of “The Man” who can’t keep his ethnic diversity from leaking out. 

Yes, Undercover Brother does for Blaxploitation what Austin Powers did for Bond movies.  But it comes from a somewhat different angle, which is why I am so enamored of the script.  It’s kind of like the style of The Groundlings versus Second City.  Austin Powers is all about character, the reference gags coming in second.  Undercover Brother is reference humor first, without too much character building.  In fact, I’m not 100% sure that the inevitable sequel will work… they’ve kind of used all the gags.  They are going to have to find themselves another platform… maybe Undercover Brother Goes To The Deep South or Undercover Brother Goes To Jail or something.   They need someone else to mock. 

But this is very smartly made movie.  Time after time, when they could have oversold the joke, they showed restraint… which, again, is saying something considering how tough some of the gags are.  The movie is about films from 70s history, but it is also smart about all of film history.  The types of gags that could never have topped the gags from movies like Blazing Saddle are simply avoided.  They manage to be funny about ideas of Black sexual prowess without ever making a size joke.  They never feel the need to use the word “nigger.”  And they get all the sex appeal out of Aunjanue Ellis and Denise Richards without ever getting nearly as sexual as the 70s films they of which they are making fun. 

And while I’m writing about Denise Richards… I wrote her off a long time ago. She is a spectacular beauty.  If she could sing and this was 20 years ago, she could be another Ann-Margret.  But even as she made movie after movie that was more interesting than not (Wild Things, Drop Dead Gorgeous), she was still getting stuck into the “hot chick” thing in the Bond movie and small films like Valentine.  But her breakout film, Starship Troopers, should have clued me in… she understood what she looked like and wanted to push the stereotype.  She has not, in actuality, taken the bimbo route.  For a girl who looks like her, who can never take the Kirsten Dunst roles because no one would ever believe her as a “normal” girl who happens to be cute, she’s done rather well in choosing roles.  It would have been great fun to see her in a movie like The Sweetest Thing, except that she would overwhelm the character that Christina Applegate scored a home run playing.  Anyway, the point is, I’m rethinking Denise Richards.  She may be one of the rare Bond Girl survivors.  She’s still a few years away from being able to play the Jacqueline Bissett role in Class, but she might be great in a film like The Deep.  But Hollywood will have to create the roles for her.  Or she needs to find the filmmaker who will make it okay for her to look like she looks.  A Paul Thomas Anderson could give her a career in her 30s.  Tarantino could do it.  Toback might be good for her, though his actresses tend to become known for nothing but sex.  A guy like Brad Anderson would be great for her.  Look at what Darren Aronofsky and Ed Harris and Keith Gordon did for Jennifer Connelly… no A Beautiful Mind without Requiem For  A Dream and Pollock and particularly, I think, Waking The Dead.  I don’t know if Richards can really win the race, but she is more than competent as a professional actress.  For the first time, I look forward to her future.

As you can tell, I liked this movie a lot.  It’s different, but it kind of reminds me of Dick, Andrew Fleming’s underappreciated and underseen comedy of three summers ago.  I think this one is more commercial.  I hope it is.  It’s the kind of movie some people will walk out of and say, “That was okay,” after they laughed constantly through the entire movie.  And I don’t think it will be nearly as funny for kids as it was for me, because they don’t have the points of reference or as strong a sense of ethnic specificity.  I’ll be happy to take my 12-year-old nephew to this movie, but will he laugh when the orange soda fountain is put in UC’s car or when he sees the Colored People’s Time clock or when UC is forced to eat mayonnaise?  I don’t think so.  Not unless he is simply to reacting to the comic timing instead of the core of the joke, which is possible. 

NOT A MOVIE STORY:  I have no choice to but to run something on this, because it’s just too damned funny.  The headline on Yahoo’s Reuters Wire was “Sunbather Mistaken for Kournikova Due to Nipples.”  Oy!  And indeed, there was testimony taken at a hearing over whether Penthouse should be forced to recall all of this month’s editions that show Judith Soltesz-Benetton topless on a beach with a story that says the photos are of Anna Kournikova.  Ironically, Mrs. Benetton is probably making her argument for privacy invalid legally by turning herself into a public figure with this suit. Penthouse may pay damages, but these photos will be impossible to suppress because they have now evolved in status from meaningless boob shots to news.

In any case, according to Reuters, Frank Ramaesiri testified that “he mistook the woman for the tennis star because of the diameter of her nipples.”  Mr. Ramaesiri later adds that “while he had never seen Kournikova at a tournament, he had seen a photo of her on the Internet in which her tennis dress was soaked with sweat, revealing the shape of her nipples. ‘They were pretty evident ... the diameter matched what we had on film.’" 

This is funny stuff, folks.  (The whole story is here.)

JUST WONDERING:  Are you looking forward to Lucy Liu’s slant on the Charlie Chan franchise?  HA!!!  I just kill myself! 

READER OF THE DAY:  SES wrote in with this:  “The Star Wars reviews are not only schizophrenic, but some are downright hilarious.  My favorite opening so far, from Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice.

‘To answer the most pressing question first: Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), now a teenager on his way to becoming Darth Vader, does not do erstwhile princess/present senator Amidala (Natalie Portman), though they do get misty-eyed in front of a romantic fireplace, and they do trade oral fluids. The prospect of the two star-crossed kids rutting like sloppy boars is never far from the viewer's mind during George Lucas's Episode II, however, since its universe is so lacquered and antiseptic your mind begins to crave the nasty heat of a good fuck like a runner needs water.’

Michelle’s Bro writes:  “Back to back summers with Devlin & Emmerich's "Godzilla" in '98 and "Wild, Wild West" in '99 couldn't have done anything to help.  Complete misfires despite what opening box office numbers were.”

Not Redwood writes:  “For me, the beginning of the end was Men In Black. Sure, it was a nice film. It was also the first film for which I got really excited and felt a tremendous disappoiintment. I couldn't believe there was so much hype for a nice little comedy with an overblown effects budget. Since then, I haven't been able to hype myself up for any of the really huge movies.”

And this from The Black Label:  “Dumb & Dumber. That's the first gross-out comedy I remember, and started a long slide down into the dumb and dumber.”

E ME:  Are you likely to get offended by Undercover Brother?  Is there any taboo that still does offend you in movies?