Melvin Gregg, Grace Byers, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jermaine Fowler, Dewayne Perkins and X Mayo in “The Blackening” (Photo by Glen Wilson/Lionsgate)
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Los Angeles area, the horror comedy film “The Blackening” features a predominantly African American cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Nine people gather at remote house in the woods for a Juneteenth weekend and are targeted by a serial killer or serial killers demanding that the house guests answer questions about African American history and pop culture in a bizarre, race-baiting board game.
Culture Audience: “The Blackening” will appeal primarily to people who want to watch a frequently boring comedy full of racist jokes that are corny and stupid.
Yvonne Orji and Jay Pharaoh in “The Blackening” (Photo by Glen Wilson/Lionsgate)
“The Blackening” tries very hard to combine the parody of “Scary Movie” and the social commentary of “Get Out,” but the results are mostly cringeworthy, unimaginative and not very funny. The ending of the movie also drags and has no suspense. Worst of all, the so-called “jokes” sound like they would’ve been rejected from a Wayans Brothers movie in the 1990s. “The Blackening” filmmakers tried to make this dreadfully empty movie look more “modern” by adding in some social media references as part of the plot, but it’s all just a smokescreen for this disappointingly lackluster and stale film. “The Blackening” had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.
Directed by Tim Story, “The Blackening” was written by Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins, who is one of the co-stars of the film. It should come as no surprise that Perkins wrote the most well-rounded and most believable character for himself in the movie. All of the other characters in “The Blackening” are hollow stereotypes. And that might be acceptable if most of the scenes “The Blackening” were genuinely funny.
Unfortunately, the movie is just one flat soundbite after another, which usually has one of these three themes: (1) the characters comment on or react to white supremacist racism; (2) the African American characters try to prove who’s the most “authentic” in being black; (3) relationship tensions involving mistrust.
“The Blackening” (which was filmed on location in the Los Angeles area) focuses on nine African American friends who have gathered for a getaway at an Airbnb rental house in a remote wooded area for Juneteenth weekend. Morgan (played by Yvonne Orji) and Shawn (played by Jay Pharoah) have arrived ahead of their friends at this house. Inside the house, Morgan and Shawn find an unusual-looking board game called The Blackening that has a racially offensive Sambo face at the center of the board.
Morgan and Shawn start playing the game when the Sambo face begins talking and says that they have to answer trivia questions about black people in history and pop culture. If Morgan and Shawn get any of the answers wrong, then they will die. The Sambo face starts cackling menacingly. None of it is really scary, of course, and the board game looks completely phony and amateurish, like an art project that a child could have made.
An example of a trivia question that Morgan and Shawn get is to name a black character from a horror movie who didn’t die first in the movie. It’s “The Blackening’s” way of poking fun at the cliché that the first person to die in a horror movie is a black person. “The Blackening” over-uses this “joke” to the point where it becomes obvious that the writers ran out of ideas. At any rate, something bad happens to Morgan and Shawn. Morgan and Shawn have gone missing by the time the other seven people arrive at the house.
The other seven people on this getaway trip are neurotic attorney Tracy (played by Antoinette Robertson); her sassy gay best friend Dewayne (played by Perkins); Tracy’s smooth-talking ex-boyfriend Nnamdi (played by Sinqua Walls); crude loudmouth Shanika (played by X Mayo); spoiled diva Allison (played by Grace Byers); laid-back stoner King (played by Melvin Gregg); and socially awkward misfit Clifton (played by Jermaine Fowler), who’s not really a friend, but he says he got a last-minute invitation from Morgan.
During Shanika’s road trip to the house in the woods, Shanika actually meets Clifton at a gas station convenience store, where they debate over which type of phone is better: an Android (Clifton’s preference) or an iPhone (Shanika’s preference). It’s just one of many examples of how the movie’s ideas are often painfully dull and lack creativity in time-wasting dialogue.
“The Blackening” also has the predictable depictions of racially charged encounters with white people being openly hostile to the black travelers. A convenience store clerk (played by James Preston Rogers) gives a hateful stare to Shanika while she’s a customer in the store. A white park ranger with the last name White (played by Diedrich Bader) stops the car that Tracy is driving with Dewayne, Allison and King as passengers. This detainment is for no other reason than Park Ranger White isn’t used to seeing black people in this area, and Tracy has to show proof that she has a legitimate rental for the house.
It’s not long before the seven people are all gathered in the house and find The Blackening game and are subjected to answering a barrage of African-American oriented questions. The disappearance of Morgan and Shawn is often forgotten as the seven house guests get caught up in playing this game. Just like Morgan and Shawn, the seven house guests are threatened with death if they get any of the questions wrong. Some of the questions include “Who is Sojourner Truth?” Viewers might be asking themselves, “Is this a horror comedy or a history test?”
One of the questions asked is: “Name five black people who were in ‘Friends.'” The Sambo face answers that question itself by saying, “I don’t know. I don’t watch that show. I watched ‘Living Single.'” It’s a very outdated joke that would have worked better in the mid-to-late 1990s, when both of those shows were on the air.
“The Blackening” takes a while to get to any real horror in the story. Instead, the movie stretches out its very thin plot with some backstory information on some of the characters. All of these backstories involve a lot of bitterness. Tracy and Nnamdi had a bitter breakup because he cheated on her. Tracy is bitter because Nnamdi has a new girlfriend. Nnamdi is bitter because Tracy was the one who broke up with him.
Dewayne is bitter because he thinks Tracy takes their friendship for granted and only seems to need him after she’s broken up with a boyfriend. Shanika is bitter about being discriminated against for being for a large-sized black woman, even though she lacks self-awareness that her obnoxious attitude is really her problem. Allison is bitter because she’s biracial and always feels that she has to prove to her black friends that she’s “black enough.” King is bitter because he feels he’s misjudged for being married to a white woman, who is never seen or heard in this movie.
“The Blackening” is obviously not meant to be taken seriously. But the movie has so many missed opportunities where it could have been funnier. The friends have a debate about “who’s the blackest person in the group,” in terms of attitude, not physical appearance. This debate drones on and on until it loses its intended impact.
When nerdy Clifton blurts out that he voted for Donald Trump twice and says that “Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance made me feel unsafe,” the other people in the group are horrified and immediately question if Clifton is really black. This type of racial stereotyping for comedy could have been handled in a wittier way. Instead, it just lazily rehashes jokes that have been done in one form or another in a lot of stand-up comedian routines.
The action scenes in “The Blackening” are poorly staged and insult viewers’ intelligence. The acting performances range from mediocre to irritating. And the answer to the mystery of who the killer is could have been intentionally obvious, but it still drains a lot of the intrigue that “The Blackening” could have had.
“The Blackening” is the type of low-quality movie that is neither great nor the worst of the worst. As far as race-based comedies go, it has nothing new or interesting to say about African American culture or race relations. “The Blackening” just sinks into a cinematic version of noxious quicksand, where weak and unremarkable movies go and are quickly forgotten.
Lionsgate will release “The Blackening” in U.S. cinemas on June 16, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place from 1951 to 1979, primarily in New York City and Los Angeles, the dramatic film “Spinning Gold” features a cast of white characters and African American characters (with a few Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy in this biopic of music mogul Neil Bogart.
Culture Clash: Bogart found hitmaking success with artists such as Donna Summer, Kiss, Gladys Knight & the Pips and the Isley Brothers, but his life was plagued by personal problems, such as marital infidelity, cocaine addiction, gambling and being millions of dollars in debt.
Culture Audience: “Spinning Gold” will appeal primarily to fans of the movie’s headliners and the artists featured in the movie, but there are noticeable factual omissions in this movie that takes a very glossy and over-exaggerated look at the movie’s protagonist.
Tayla Parx in “Spinning Gold” (Photo courtesy of Hero Partners and Howling Wolf Films)
“Spinning Gold” would be perfectly fine as a jukebox musical on stage. But as a cinematic experience, this flashy movie erases too many important facts. “Spinning Gold” makes it look like agents and attorneys didn’t exist in the 1970s music industry. This biopic of music mogul Neil Bogart also has questionable depictions of him as a music creator and innovator. This rewriting of history does a disservice and is disrespectful to the real people whose work is sidelined or removed from this movie’s story.
If you believe this movie, then you’d have to believe that Bogart was the one who told Donna Summer to make orgasmic moans in the recording studio when she recorded her breakthrough 1975 hit “Love to Love You Baby.” (These moans made the song controversial at the time and generated a lot of publicity for the song.) You’d also have to believe that Bogart made “Love to Love You Baby” a hit, simply by gluing the record to an influential radio DJ’s turntable and playing it on the radio, while enticing the DJ to be handcuffed in another room by two prostitutes. If you believe this movie, then you’d have also to believe that Bogart was the one who came up with the idea of the Kiss Army fan club, when it was actually Kiss fans Bill Starkey and Jay Evans who founded the Kiss Army, when they were teenagers in 1975.
Written and directed by Timothy Scott Bogart (one of Neil’s sons), “Spinning Gold” does tell viewers up front that this version of Neil’s story is told through a very rosy perspective of what Neil’s memories would be if he told the story himself. Neil Bogart died of cancer in 1982, when he was 39 years old. The movie is supposed to be narrated by the ghost of Neil Bogart looking back on his life. This narration is a little excessive and over-explains many things that are already shown in the movie.
As the Neil Bogart character (played by Jeremy Jordan) admits near the beginning of the film, the story presented in “Spinning Gold” isn’t very accurate: “It’s just that memories are complicated. We remember what we want to remember. We forget what we want to forget.” This trite explanation will just make viewers think that “Spinning Gold” lacks credibility. And indeed, most of the movie looks like a fairy tale, if the fairy tale had the expected clichés of sex, drugs and rock and roll in the music industry.
“Spinning Gold” certainly delivers when it comes to rousing and entertaining performances of beloved songs by artists who were signed to record companies (Buddha Records and Casablanca Records) that were led by Neil Bogart at the time. The movie features hits from Summer, Kiss, the Isley Brothers and Parliament, among others. To their credit, the “Spinning Gold” cast members who perform these songs use their real voices instead of taking the easier route of lip syncing the original recordings. Many of the acting performances are charismatic, especially by Jordan, who gives the Neil character enough roguish charm in Neil’s attempt to justify many of the sleazy and corrupt business tactics that Neil uses in the film.
However, some of the cast members are jarringly miscast and do not look convincing as the real people they are supposed to play, by looking too old for the role or by not looking anything like the real people. For example, Tayla Parx, who has the role of disco queen Summer, does not look anything like the real Summer. Casey Likes (who plays Kiss lead singer/bassist Gene Simmons) and Samuel Harris (who plays Kiss lead singer/rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley) also have no physical resemblance to the real people. In the case of Harris, he looks about 10 years older than the real age (mid-20s) that Stanley was in real life during the Kiss years that are depicted in the movie.
Many of the movie’s scenes are filmed and lighted like a stage musical, which might or might not appeal to viewers, depending on how much they like stage musicals. The cinematography, production design and costume design are among the best aspects of “Spinning Gold.” But the film editing is hit-and-miss. There’s an over-reliance on quick-cutting montages. The timeline of the story is also jumbled, as it’s told in non-chronological order, with the constant narration doing little to clear up any confusion.
The movie tells viewers from these disjointed flashbacks that Neil had a hustling entrepreneur personality from an early age. Throughout his life, Neil changed his name (his birth name was Neil Bogatz) and reinvented himself several times. Neil had a dysfunctional childhood, growing up in a working-class part of Brooklyn, New York. His father Al Bogatz (played by Jason Isaacs) worked as a mail deliverer for the U.S. Postal Service and was a gambling addict who frequently owed money to people.
A scene in the movie shows young Neil witnessing his father getting beaten up by some thugs over gambling debts. (Winslow Fegley portrays Neil as an 8-year-old child.) As a child, Neil started a laundry business using the washers and dryers in the apartment building where he lived. In a short period of time, underage Neil was making more money than his father, according to Neil. (It’s another story that sounds embellished.)
Neil’s mother Ruth Bogatz (played by Ellen David) is barely in the movie and isn’t shown speaking until much later in Neil’s life, after Neil becomes the wealthy owner of Casablanca Records, and he buys his parents a big house. The movie has repeated references to Neil having “daddy issues” of wanting to be a gambler like his father, but to become rich and successful at it, unlike his father. Although there are a few scenes of Neil gambling in casinos, his real gambles were with money in the music industry.
By the time Neil was in his late teens in 1961, Neil had changed his named to Neil Scott and became an aspiring singer and dancer. “Spinning Gold” depicts Neil meeting his first wife Beth Weiss (played by Michelle Monaghan) while he’s working in a ballroom at a hotel owned by her father. She’s seated at the same table as her sister Nancy (played by Peyton List), who would later become one of Neil’s record promoters. Neil asks Beth to dance, and she says that she doesn’t dance with the staff.
And then, the next thing you know, Beth and Neil are slow dancing by themselves on the dance floor, while everyone in the ballroom watches them. Neil clutches Beth from behind, and he asks her to tell him what she dreams about at night. Neil can sense that Beth wants to break out of her “pampered princess/good girl” image that she has and hook up with a “bad boy,” just to annoy her domineering father. And Neil is right.
Neil soon becomes a small-time pop star, when he’s able to win a local radio contest hosted by Murray the K (a famous New York radio DJ) where listeners could vote for Neil’s song “Cherry on Top” versus whatever was Elvis Presley’s latest single at the time. Neil shrewdly knew that only local people would be voting, so he figured out a way to get enough votes. (The movie never shows how.) He gets a lot of publicity for being an artist who received more listener votes than Presley. “Cherry on Top” becomes a minor hit. Neil eventually ended up as a one-hit wonder, but he got a taste of the music business, and he was hooked.
Neil and Beth were married in 1964, and they later had three children together: Jill, Tim and Bradley. (In the movie, their daughter’s name is spelled Jill. In real life, her name is spelled Jylle.) By 1964, Neil had changed his name to Wayne Stewart and Wayne Roberts when he had a short-lived stint as a porn actor (a scene in “Spinning Gold” shows Neil saying he made porn to pay for Beth’s engagement ring) and as a record promoter for MGM Records. Neil’s porn work isn’t recreated in “Spinning Gold” but Neil’s wheeling and dealing in the music industry are depicted in ways that are both overly sentimental and cynically selective.
His first big hit for MGM was Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs’ 1964 pop-rock song “Wooly Bully.” He is also shown bribing local record stores to carry this single as a way to increase sales. Eventually, Neil became the president of MGM Records. His MGM experiences breeze by in the film in many quick montages. Later in the movie, there is brief acknowledgement that Beth taught Neil most of what he learned about accounting and other business skills he would need in a managerial position.
Bribing people to promote or sell music (also called “payola”) was a tactic that “Spinning Gold” admits that Neil used throughout his career and is shown in multiple scenes in the film. There was a U.S. government crackdown on music industry payola in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but payola was openly done before then. Payola hasn’t gone away, but people aren’t as blatant about it as they were in Neil Bogart’s heyday.
The payola bribery would be through cash, drugs, prostitutes, high-priced gifts and other ways for people to be persuaded by whoever was giving out these bribes. “Spinning Gold” portrays influential New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker (played by Chris Redd) as being a frequent recipient of payola. In the movie, Neil justifies it by saying that no one he bribed ever played music that they didn’t want to play. It’s a statement that sounds as phony as a $3 bill.
“Spinning Gold” shows that Neil (now going by the name Neil Bogart) left MGM Records to have even greater success at Buddah Records. The movie’s opening scene takes place in 1967. It depicts Neil showing up at an African American church where the Edwin Hawkins Singers are performing “Oh Happy Day” as the church choir. Edwin Hawkins (played Obi Abili) is sitting at the side of the altar, while Neil tries to persuade Edwin to sign this choir to a record deal.
Neil is convinced that “Oh Happy Day” will be the first gospel song to be a major crossover pop hit. And in order to convince Edwin, Neil takes wads of cash out of his briefcase. And then, when Neil is sure he’s sealed the deal, he joins the choir on stage and sings in front of them, as if he’s the star of the show. It’s a crassly corny and unrealistic scene. Neil tells the “Spinning Gold” audience in one of his many voiceovers that is not how it happened in real life, but that’s the way he wants to remember it.
Neil’s other successes at Buddha that are depicted in “Spinning Gold” include signing Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Isley Brothers and Bill Withers. Gladys Knight (played by Ledisi) is shown in a somewhat amusing scene where Gladys and Neil are in the recording studio. She convinces him that the song “Midnight Plane to Houston” should be changed to “Midnight Train to Georgia,” which was a hit for Gladys Knight & the Pips in 1973. It’s one of the few times in the movie that someone other than Neil is shown coming up with an idea that would turn out to be a hit. Gladys Knight & the Pips signed with Buddha Records after leaving Motown Records.
“Spinning Gold” also depicts Neil as the one who came up with the riffs for the Isley Brothers’ 1969 hit “It’s Your Thing.” In real life, Ronald Isley, O’Kelly Isley Jr. and Rudolph Isley wrote “It’s Your Thing,” but the movie makes it looks like Neil was an uncredited writer for the song. Neil persuades Ronald Isley (played Jason Derulo), who is shown as the leader of the Isley Brothers, to have the Isley Brothers leave Motown Records for Buddha Records, because Neil promised the Isley Brothers could have their own record label, with Buddha as distributors.
The segment on Withers is also portrayed as Neil being able to “poach” another artist from Motown. According to the story presented in “Spinning Gold,” Bill Withers (played by Pink Sweats) was close to signing Motown, but Neil discovered the young singer and convinced him to sign instead to Sussex Records, a spinoff of Buddha Records. “Spinning Gold” features performances of the Withers hits “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lean on Me.”
As a result of Motown “losing” Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Isley Brothers and Withers because of Neil’s business persuasions, the movie depicts Neil getting “punished” for it. There’s a segment showing Neil getting roughed up by goons who were sent by Motown founder Berry Gordy. This attack happens in front of some of Neil’s record company colleagues who are in Neil’s inner circle. Neil then implies to the thugs that he has connections with the Italian Mafia, so the attackers back off from this assault. It’s all handled in a very flippant way in the movie, as if to show that Neil could talk his way out of anything.
By this time, Neil’s team at Buddha included his best friend Cecil Holmes (played by Jay Pharoah), who worked in promotions and artists and repertoire (A&R); sister-in-law Nancy, who worked in promotions; Buck Reingold (played by Dan Fogler), who worked in publicity and would become Nancy’s husband; and Neil’s cousin Larry Harris (played by James Wolk), who started as a record promoter and later became an executive vice president at Casablanca Records. Cecil is the only one in this group who is shown questioning some of Neil’s wild spending, or standing up to Neil when Neil’s ego gets out of control.
All of these team members would continue to work with Neil when he left Buddha in 1973, to launch his own label: Casablanca Records. This new venture also meant that Neil, Beth and their children would relocate to Los Angeles, where Casablanca was headquartered. In real life, Bogart, Holmes, Reingold and Harris are listed as co-founders/partners of Casablanca. In “Spinning Gold,” Bogart is depicted as the sole founder and the only one who decided to eventually sell 49% of Casablanca to Polygram.
At the time Casablanca was launched, Kiss was the only act signed to Casablanca, which had a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Records. Kiss was selling out concerts, but the band’s albums were flops early in the band’s career. An early scene in “Spinning Gold” shows a lavish launch party for Casablanca being a showcase for a Kiss performance. (The Kiss song “Shout It Out Loud” is performed in this scene, even though “Shout It Out Loud” wasn’t released until 1976, about three years after this party scene is supposed to take place.)
The party ends in disaster because all the smoke from the smoke machines on stage set off the room’s sprinklers, sending drenched partygoers out the door. And what does Neil do? He dances with his daughter Jill (played by Sloane Bogart) while water rains down from the sprinklers, because he promised her a dance at the party. Some people might consider this scene to be endearing, while others will find it annoying in its sappy phoniness.
“Spinning Gold” shows the friction that Neil and his Casablanca cronies had with the executives at Warner Bros., particularly Warner Bros. Records chief Mo Ostin (played by Nick Sandow), who was starting to see Casablanca as a very bad investment. Casablanca was heavily in debt to Warner Bros., for about $5 million to $6 million, with no hit artists on Casablanca. Warner Bros. eventually cut its losses and ended its deal with Casablanca in 1974. The movie depicts it as a situation where Neil basically told Mo a version of “You can’t fire me because I quit.”
As a completely independent label in 1974, Casablanca was still losing millions of dollars from overspending. It didn’t help that Neil had a drug problem and a gambling habit. The company’s first release as a fully independent label was an album compilation of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” highlights titled “Here’s Johnny: Magic Moments From the Tonight Show,” which was a major bomb for Casablanca.
Other acts on Casablanca weren’t making hits. George Clinton (played by Wiz Khalifa), lead singer of the funk group Parliament, convinces Neil that the band needs a high-priced spaceship that operates on stage during the band’s concerts. George brags in the movie that everyone else in the band got new cars from Casablanca, but he got a spaceship. Parliament songs “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)” and “Mothership Connection (Star Child)” are performed in “Spinning Gold.”
There are several scenes of Neil negotiating directly with artists, with no mention of agents and attorneys, who are never shown in this movie. People with extensive knowledge of the music industry of the 1970s are the most likely to notice all the mistakes that “Spinning Gold” makes about how the music industry worked back then and, to a certain extent, still works now. These music aficionados are among the people in this movie’s target audience, so it matters tremendously whether or not “Spinning Gold” has credibility with a great deal of the audience.
The only artist managers (not the same as agents) who are depicted in the movie are Kiss co-managers Bill Aucoin (played by Michael Ian Black) and Joyce Biawitz (played by Lyndsy Fonseca), who is portrayed as someone who started off having a transactional extramarital affair with Neil soon after they met, but they eventually fell in love with each other. Neil says in the movie that he was in love with Beth and Joyce at the same time.
Joyce would become Neil’s second wife in 1976, but their wedding is never shown in the movie, and neither is the birth of their son Evan, nicknamed Kidd. Fonseca, who has believable chemistry with Jordan, gives one of the standout non-musical performances in “Spinning Gold” as quick-thinking and ambitious Joyce. Neil says in one of the movie’s many voiceovers that Joyce reminded him a lot of himself.
One of the movie’s best scenes is an argument about Kiss’ future with Casablanca Records. Kiss co-manager Bill and Kiss members Gene and Paul are on one side; Neil is on the other side; and Kiss co-manager Joyce is caught somewhere in between, but she’s leaning toward siding with Neil. It’s the only scene in the movie that realistically calls out Joyce’s conflict of interest of being an artist manager while also being romantically involved with the artist’s record company president, who is in disputes with the artist for underpaying the artist.
The story behind Kiss’ big hit ballad “Beth” is depicted as the band’s way of making fun of the love triangle between Beth, Neil and Joyce. Neil and Joyce are shown as being very offended by the song, which wasn’t released until 1976, a few years after it was written. The movie never bothers to show how Beth felt about a song that was supposedly named after her. “Spinning Gold” also shows that there were disagreements between band members, the band’s management and Casablanca executives over whether or not this bittersweet ballad was the right fit for Kiss’ image as a fun-loving, partying rock band. (Kiss’ 1975 signature anthem “Rock and Roll All Nite” is performed in “Spinning Gold.”)
There were other complications with “Beth” that the movie doesn’t detail. “Beth” had lead vocals by Kiss drummer Peter Criss (played by Alex Gaskarth, who performs the song in the movie). There were ego issues with Simmons and Stanley, who were the main lead singers and songwriters of Kiss and were not involved with writing the song. In real life, even though Criss got a co-songwriting credit for “Beth,” there have been reports that he actually didn’t have anything to do with writing the song, whose co-songwriters are Stan Penridge and Bob Ezrin.
Casablanca still had massive financial problems in the record company’s first few years. Casablanca was millions of dollars in debt to Warner Bros. Records—a debt that Neil says he later paid off when Casablanca became profitable. Neil was also taking out personal loans for Casablanca and for his gambling. A Mafia-type thug named Big Joey (played by Vincent Pastore) shows up in the movie occasionally to loan money to Neil and make threats when Neil doesn’t pay back his debts on time. There’s a scene in the movie where Neil gets assaulted by some of Big Joey’s thugs, and Neil says in the narration that it’s sadly ironic how Neil became just like his father.
As depicted in “Spinning Gold,” Casablanca’s blockbuster success really happened because of disco queen Summer, who had a string of big hits with Casablanca from 1975 to 1979, including “Bad Girls,” “Dim All the Lights” and “Last Dance,” which are performed in the movie. The success of Summer began when Casablanca re-released Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” as a 17-minute single. And you guessed it: Neil is credited with coming up with this idea, which he took credit for in real life. “Love to Love You Baby” was written by Giorgio Moroder, Summer and Pete Bellotte, but you get the feeling that if “Spinning Gold” could get away with it, the movie would want to give credit to Neil Bogart for co-writing the song too. Bellotte was the producer of “Love to Love You Baby,” but “Spinning Gold” erases him completely from the movie.
The scene depicting Summer re-recording “Love to Love You Baby” is quite ludicrous, even though the movie wants this scene to be sexy. The scene shows almost everyone in the studio, including music producer Giorgio Moroder (played by Sebastian Maniscalco, wearing a very bad wig and having a questionable Italian accent), storming out in disgust because Neil insists that the song will be released as a single that’s more than 15 minutes long. Everyone except Neil thinks the song will flop because radio stations won’t play a song of this length.
The only people left in the studio are Donna and Neil, who then takes over the role as producer. Neil coos in Donna’s ears and rubs up against her to “motivate” her to sound sexier as she sings and moans the song. It reaches a point where Donna is lying on her back on the studio floor and almost masturbating while she’s still recording the song. The scene gives the impression that if Donna started using her microphone as sex toy, then Neil would’ve been right there grinning along, as long as it meant that the song would be a big hit.
“Spinning Gold” makes it look like Neil generously spent a lot of money on his artists because he believed in them wholeheartedly. There’s no question that he had a strong belief in his artists. However, the movie irresponsibly avoids detailing the exploitation that is only hinted at in certain scenes. In one scene, Donna is shocked to find out that Neil changed her real name to the stage name Donna Summer (her birth name was LaDonna Gaines) without her knowledge and permission. This type of exploitation is quickly mentioned once and then never mentioned again.
Not surprisingly, “Spinning Gold” never mentions the real-life lawsuits that artists (including Summer) filed against Casablanca when Neil Bogart was in charge of the company. Summer would eventually leave Casablanca and signed a deal with Geffen Records in 1980. Her split from Casablanca is also not in the movie. In a “Spinning Gold” scene, Neil says in a voiceover that he and Casablanca Records completely fabricated and controlled her image and that Summer’s real personality was hidden from the public.
The problem with “Spinning Gold” is you can’t make those kinds of statements without backing it up with something substantial. It’s a well-known fact that in real life, Summer came from a religious background, and she was deeply conflicted about the sex-oriented disco music she was making. But in “Spinning Gold,” this inner conflict is just cavalierly mentioned in a throwaway line where Donna says that she’s worried about what her mother will think about “Love to Love You Baby.”
The movie also never fully explores the damage that Neil’s infidelity and divorce did to his first wife Beth and their children. There’s a scene where Beth and Neil separate (it’s clear that she’s the one who dumped him), long after she knows he’s having an affair with Joyce. He selfishly says to Beth: “You’re breaking my heart.” Beth replies that now he knows how it feels. The children’s feelings are nowhere to be seen in this movie.
Neil’s cocaine addiction is shown in several scenes, but the movie ultimately glosses over this addiction. It’s never shown if he ever sought professional help for this addiction, or if anyone close to him urged him to go to rehab. The closest that a loved one comes to pointing out that Neil’s addiction is a big problem is his father Al, in a scene where Al visits Neil at Neil’s home in California. Al is alarmed that Neil is openly snorting cocaine in front of him. Al scolds Neil a little bit by telling him that drugs will make Neil do stupid things, but then Neil sends Al on his way after giving Al some cash as a gift/handout.
Much of “Spinning Gold” depicts Neil’s showmanship ability to get media attention for publicity stunts that the movie credits him for creating. It’s questionable if he came up with all of those ideas himself in real life. And the one publicist depicted in the movie (Buck) is hardly shown doing any work at all. He’s just portrayed as a minion who parties a lot, occasionally gets into physical fights, and shows up at meetings to agree with what Neil says.
Noticeably absent from the movie: Cher, who was briefly signed to Casablanca Records, which released two Cher albums (“Take Me Home” and “Prisoner”) in 1979. Cher’s biggest hit song for Casablanca was the title track to “Take Me Home,” which hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was certified gold in the United States. Cher’s omission from “Spinning Gold” is probably because the filmmakers couldn’t get the rights her music and because the movie quickly mentions toward the end that Neil left Casablanca by 1980. That was the year that Polygram bought the remaining shares of Casablanca, and when disco’s popularity was on the decline.
The Village People (Casablanca Records’ admittedly manufactured pop group, with most of the original members not having any singing talent) are quickly mentioned and shown in non-speaking roles toward the end of “Spinning Gold.” The movie doesn’t mention Neil Bogart’s failed attempt to become a hit filmmaker: He was an executive producer of the 1978 disco comedy flop “Thank God It’s Friday,” starring Summer, Valerie Landsburg, Jeff Goldblum, Terri Nunn (future lead singer of Berlin) and Debra Winger.
Also not mentioned in “Spinning Gold”: After leaving Casablanca, Neil founded Boardwalk Records, whose biggest breakout act in the early 1980s was Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. “Spinning Gold” is already overstuffed with a jumbled narrative, so adding these details wouldn’t help the movie anyway.
“Spinning Gold” is at its best when it’s about nostalgia for 1960s and 1970s music. But this movie is supposed to be a biopic, not a music compilation. Although “Spinning Gold” has some talented cast members who do the best they can with the material that they’ve been given, other cast members look like they don’t belong in this movie. And no matter how many times a scripted drama will take liberties with facts in telling the story of a real person, audiences still expect a core of authenticity in telling the story. A more accurate title for “Spinning Gold” is “Spinning the Truth.”
Hero Partners and Howling Wolf Films released “Spinning Gold” in select U.S. cinemas on March 31, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New Orleans, the dramatic film “All My Life” features a predominantly white cast (with some Asians, Latinos and African Americans) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: Shortly after getting engaged to be married, a couple experiences a major health crisis that threatens the life of the man in the relationship.
Culture Audience: “All My Life” will appeal primarily to people who like predictable dramas about romances that are plagued by cancer.
Harry Shum Jr. and Jessica Rothe in “All My Life” (Photo by Patti Perret/Universal Pictures)
The dramatic film “All My Life” (directed by Marc Meyers) is one in a long list of sappy tearjerkers that’s more like a formulaic “disease of the week” movie made for television instead of a well-made cinematic experience that tells a story in a unique way. The city where “All My Life” takes place isn’t mentioned in the story, but the movie was filmed in New Orleans and has some very noticeable New Orleans landmarks. Even though “All My Life” is based on a true story, there’s something very phony and off-putting about this film that some viewers might notice, while others won’t.
If something seems “off” about this movie, that’s because there is something very unbalanced about it: The male partner in the relationship has a family who is never seen or mentioned. In fact, this whole movie seems designed to make the female partner in the relationship look like the well-rounded family person who’s practically saintly during this romance. She plays the role of “emotional rescuer” and “life coach” to her more insecure male partner, whose family background is of no concern to the filmmakers of “All My Life.”
The couple in this relationship happens to be interracial—she’s white and he’s Asian, just like the real-life couple—and their racial identities don’t have be the focal point of the story. But to completely erase any mention of him having a family—especially considering the life-threatening illness he experiences in the story—makes this “romantic” movie feel very one-sided and inauthentic. A culturally tone-deaf film like “All My Life” is one of the reasons why Asians are underrepresented in American-made entertainment.
The screenplay for “All My Life” (written by Todd Rosenberg) is also littered with so many lazy clichés that people who’ve seen enough of these types of hackneyed movies will already know exactly how this story is going to end even before it starts. “All My Life” is told from the perspective of the female protagonist Jennifer “Jenn” Carter (played by Jessica Rothe), which is obvious from the get-go because she’s the narrator in the voiceover that starts off the film. The romance of Jenn Carter and Solomon “Sol” Chau (played by Harry Shum Jr.) is at the center of the story.
At the beginning of the movie, Jenn is portrayed as a bright and energetic woman in her mid-20s who’s got a very busy life where she works and goes to school. But as is usually the narrative in hokey movies like this, her life is supposed to be “empty” until she’s found her one true love. In the voiceover, Jenn says that an average person lives 27,375 days (that’s 75 years, for anyone who doesn’t want to do the math), and she was living a routine life until something major happened to her. “I didn’t notice that my life was becoming a series of forgotten days,” she says in the tone of voice that might as well shout, “My life was boring until I fell in love!”
Jenn and Sol have their “meet cute” moment at a sports bar, where Jenn and her two best friends Amanda Fletcher (played by Chrissie Fit) and Megan Denhoff (played by Marielle Scott) have gone with the intention to just have one drink before heading somewhere else on their evening out. Jenn’s job is vaguely described in the movie (at one point in the story, she mentions to Sol that she works in “decoration”), and the movie never actually shows her working. She’s also studying to get her master’s degree in psychology. There’s a brief scene of her in a classroom.
The details of Amanda’s career are also not revealed, but apparently she works in some type of office job, because Jenn and Megan raise their drinks to her in a congratulatory toast for Amanda getting a promotion and a new assistant. Amanda is the sassiest of the three women, but she and Megan basically have sidekick roles in this story. Megan’s job is never really mentioned, but she seems to be some kind of event planner, because she does all the organizing of Jenn and Sol’s inevitable wedding. Sol and Jenn’s wedding is not a secret plot development, since it’s in shown in this movie’s trailer and other marketing materials for “All My Life.”
Back at the sports bar, the three female friends are immediately noticed by three male friends: Sol, who works in digital marketing; his best pal Dave Berger (played by Jay Pharoah), who’s a professional boxer; and Kyle Campbell (played by Kyle Allen), whose job is not mentioned in the film. The three men (who are all around the same age as the women) make their way over to the women’s table. There’s some mild flirting, but it’s clear that the most romantic sparks are flying between Jenn and Sol. Thankfully, there’s no “triple date” scenario in this movie, where all six of them unrealistically pair up into convenient couples.
Jenn and Sol quickly begin dating each other. For their first date, they go jogging together in a park. Sol has some pain near the right side of his waist, which foreshadows what’s to come later. He assumes it’s just a cramp and doesn’t think much of it, but it happens again later in the film.
Sol and Jenn’s romance is portrayed as very conventional, with a lot of tropes that have been seen before in similar movies: romantic dinners, getting caught in the rain during a date, and the couple having a signature song. For Sol and Jenn, their signature song is the Oasis hit “Don’t Look Back in Anger” (originally released in 1995), which they see a musical string trio perform in the park on their first date, and Sol begins singing along. People who are fans of Shum because of his role in the TV musical series “Glee” will get their big cheesy musical moment later in the movie.
Sol and Jenn eventually become lovers. There are no sex scenes in this very tame movie. Jenn and Sol are a believable couple together, but the way that they are written for this movie, they’re utterly predictable. And because this movie is hell-bent on denying that Sol has a family, his character comes across as someone who only exists to fulfill the romantic fantasies of Jenn. The limited way in which Sol’s character is written is a disservice to the real-life person.
One of the ways that the movie makes Sol a vessel for Jenn’s wish fulfillment is in how she steers him in another career direction. Sol hates his digital-marketing job because he has an overly demanding boss who makes him work long hours that go beyond his job description. Sol’s real passion and talent are in cooking. And he’s very good at it, based on the reactions he gets from people who eat any food that he prepares. But because Jenn is the “emotional rescuer” and “life coach” in this story, she spends a lot of time trying to convince Sol to leave his miserable job and become a restaurant chef.
Jenn’s older cousin Gigi Carter (played by Ever Carradine) conveniently owns a restaurant, and Jenn says that Gigi would love to hire Sol as a sous chef at the restaurant. Sol has some previous experience in food service, since he briefly worked part-time at a food truck. But he’s reluctant to become a full-time chef because he says that he doesn’t have formal training (even though it’s common knowledge that many professional chefs never went to culinary school) and he tells Jenn that he can’t afford to quit his digital-marketing job. As a solution, Jenn suggests that Sol move into her apartment to share expenses.
Sol and Jenn negotiate over their live-in arrangement, such as which types of furniture they will or won’t keep, and who will do the cooking and when. Jenn also tells Sol in a serious tone that she has one major condition of them being committed to living together: “Step up when it’s time to step up. Mistakes I can handle. Regrets I can’t live with.” Sol agrees to the terms that Jenn sets, because this movie is more concerned about Jenn’s thoughts and needs than Sol’s.
At first, things go well for Jenn and Sol. However, Jenn is dismayed that Sol’s office job has been making him so worn-down and exhausted that he seems to have lost interest in cooking. Jenn and Amanda come up with the idea for Sol to cook for the Thanksgiving dinner party that will be held at Sol and Jenn’s place. In addition to Sol and Jenn, the other people at the dinner party are some of their friends, Jen’s single mother Hope Marie Carter (played by Molly Hagen) and Jenn’s cousin Gigi, who owns the restaurant where Jenn thinks Sol should work.
It’s at this dinner where Gigi tastes Sol’s cooking for the first time and basically hires him on the spot. He agrees to work at Gigi’s restaurant as a sous chef. Jenn is thrilled because she knows that she was the driving force behind this life-changing decision for Sol. Because this Thanksgiving dinner party was for family and friends, it’s where observant viewers will really notice the big erasure of Sol’s family in this movie.
Jenn’s mother and cousin are in several scenes with Jenn, and all three of these family members are obviously a support system for each other. Jenn’s father is not seen or mentioned in the story. But what this movie leaves out is any explanation for why Sol’s entire family is never seen or mentioned in the story. Not once does Jenn seem curious about Sol’s family or interested in meeting them. Sol doesn’t mention them either because it’s obviously not in the screenplay.
And although “All My Life” is the type of movie that wants to be “color blind” by not mentioning anyone’s race, it actually seems racist to portray the Asian person in this couple as the one who doesn’t deserve to have any family background whatsoever. The filmmakers obviously didn’t want to cast any additional Asian people as Sol’s family members, but it wouldn’t have been so hard to at least mention why Sol doesn’t have family members to support him during his health crisis. Needless to say, there’s no mention of Sol having family members at his wedding either.
However, the movie does want to get some mileage out of Shum’s “Glee” fame, because Sol’s marriage proposal is an overblown musical scene right out of something that would be in “Glee.” At the same park where Sol and Jenn had their first date, Sol stages an elaborate presentation where he, all of their friends, that same musical string trio that Jen and Sol saw on their first date, as well several people who have never been seen before in the story, perform and sing “Don’t Look Back in Anger” to Jen. The proposal happens near a lake, so some people arrive by boat for this big musical number. Some anonymous spectators are part of this musical number too. It’s as cringeworthy and unrealistic as it sounds.
By the way, Keala Settle (of “The Greatest Showman” fame) has a small role as Viv Lawrence, who works at a vintage shop that sells clothing and some vinyl records. Sol goes in the store one day to look for a gift for Jenn. As he sifts through the crates of vinyl records, Viv recommends anything by Pat Benatar.
Viv tells Sol that Viv used to work in a nightclub where every time a band played the Pat Benatar song “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” the crowd loved it. As soon as Viv says that, you know what’s coming later in the movie. And it does: Viv sings “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” at Sol and Jenn’s wedding.
Before the wedding happens, there’s a lot of turmoil because of the health crisis. Shortly after getting engaged, Sol wakes up drenched in sweat. He’s taken to a hospital and gets a diagnosis from his doctor Alan Mendolson (played by Dan Butler), who tells Sol and Jenn that Sol has a perforated ulcer. But then, the doctor breaks some news that’s much worse. Actually, its not a perforated ulcer. Sol has a cancerous tumor on his liver.
After surgery, Sol and Jenn are told (much to their great relief) that Sol is on track to make a full recovery. They want to get married in a back-patio area at Gigi’s restaurant, but event planner Megan thinks that this space is too small and not upscale enough. The debate over where Sol and Jenn will have their wedding becomes trivial when they get more bad news: Sol’s liver cancer has returned with vengeance. He’s given only six months to live.
When he was initially diagnosed, Sol told Jenn that if he ever gets a medical diagnosis that’s terminal, they should get a dog together. Jenn finds out that Sol’s medical condition has gotten worse when she comes home one day and sees that he’s gotten a dog, which he’s named Otis. Sol gives her the details of his terminal diagnosis.
Sol and Jenn are devastated, of course, and Sol eventually wants to cancel the wedding. Jenn disagrees and thinks that Sol is giving up too easily. Amanda and Megan come up with the idea to start a GoFundMe campaign to raise $20,000 for Sol and Jenn’s wedding and honeymoon. Amanda and Megan insist on it, and Sol and Jenn agree to this plan.
Mario Cantone has a small role in the movie as Jerome Patterson, the flamboyant manager of the sought-after venue that ends up being rented for the wedding ceremony and reception. Conveniently, there’s a sudden cancellation that allows Sol and Jenn to book the venue on very short notice. They plan to have their honeymoon in an unnamed tropical location that has all the characteristics of a dream vacation, including staying at an upscale beachside resort.
As the story goes on, Jenn is portrayed as someone who doesn’t seem to have any real flaws. Jenn has vulnerabilities (which are not the same as flaws), because there are the inevitable scenes where she wails and cries during the health crisis that shakes this fairytale romance to its core. At the same time, Jenn is portrayed as being the more “motivated” partner in the relationship. She’s the one who gives the pep talks for Sol to change careers and when Sol inevitably becomes pessimistic about his cancer.
Sol’s reaction plays into fairytale stereotypes that men are supposed to be stoic and not cry when they’re faced with having a terminal disease where there’s a high probability that they will die a very slow and painful death. But Sol, the sensitive romantic who pours out his emotions during an elaborate marriage proposal, never shows the emotional vulnerability of crying about his cancer. The most that he does is complain about all the side effects he gets from his cancer treatment. Of course, there isn’t one way that people are supposed to emotionally react to a cancer diagnosis, so Saul’s macho “I’m not going to cry” reaction shouldn’t be judged too harshly.
The movie depicts Jenn as vacillating between trying to lift Sol’s spirits and expecting him to coddle her when she wants to equate his pain with her pain. At one point in the movie, when Sol explains to Jenn that he can’t really think about anything except his cancer treatment’s painful side effects that he’s experiencing at that moment, Jenn makes a scolding remark along the lines of “We’re in this together!” It comes across as a bit insensitive on Jenn’s part, because Jenn’s not the one going through the physical trauma of cancer and the nauseating side effects of cancer treatment.
Although this movie doesn’t show Sol expressing any deep fear and gut-wrenching sadness (Jenn is the one who has the emotional meltdowns), there’s something that does ring true when it comes to some male emotional vulnerability shown in the story. Sol’s friend Kyle is somewhat of a generic character until it’s revealed that Kyle’s father died of a terminal illness. Sol’s diagnosis has triggered Kyle into having bad memories of watching his father slowly die, especially when Kyle goes to the hospital to visit Sol.
And the only way that Kyle knows how to cope is to start avoiding Sol, which he does for the majority of Sol’s cancer treatment. Kyle’s reaction is explained as being similar to having post-traumatic stress disorder. And it’s bad enough where Kyle doesn’t even want to be one of Sol’s groomsmen, although Kyle is still invited to the wedding. The movie shows whether or not Kyle will end up going to the wedding.
“All My Life” is supposed to be a romantic movie about a young and modern couple who go through a lot of turmoil leading up to their dream wedding, but there are some old-fashioned and backwards mindsets that stink up this movie, beginning with the erasure of the groom’s Asian family. There are also some sexist ways in how the gender roles for the couple are framed in the movie. Jenn’s career is barely given a thought, while there are plenty of scenes of Sol at work and a lot of emphasis on how his career is going.
After Jenn meets Sol, her scenes are almost always about the energy she puts into the relationship with Sol. It’s a very big gender imbalance in how these two people are portrayed, which is made all the more noticeable because Jenn doesn’t want to be a full-time homemaker. Yet her career goals are buried in the story, and she spends more time trying to help Sol in his career. It’s really the filmmakers’ way of saying that they don’t think Jenn’s career is as important as Sol’s.
Although the character of Jenn is supposed to have many melodramatic emotions in this movie, Rothe is very good at not going too over the top into campy territory. Her acting skills make the mushiness in the screenplay more tolerable than it should be. Shum is more hampered with playing a stilted character who has no backstory or fascinating character development, so there isn’t really anything he can do but play a character whose disease is often used as a stand-in for his personality.
Aside from erasing Sol’s family and erasing any depiction of Jenn actually working at a job that helps pay her bills, another omission that makes “All My Life” look very fake is that Jenn and Sol never talk about whether or not they want to have kids. Sol’s cancer diagnosis would definitely affect any family planning they might or nor might not have, but that’s an issue that’s unrealistically left out of the movie. Maybe it’s because if Jenn and Sol talked about having children, then it would remind viewers that Sol and Jenn’s kids would be biracial, and it would be more of a reason for people to notice that Sol’s family isn’t in this story.
“All My Life” is the type of movie that looks like it’s not worth paying extra money as a rental or a purchase but instead belongs on the Hallmark Channel or as part of a Netflix subscription. The cast members are serviceable in their acting roles, but the screenplay and direction are utterly in “hack” territory. Worst of all, the filmmakers went out of their way to erase some very realistic and interesting aspects of this real-life romance that could have made this movie stand out from all the “disease of the week” movies that are just like it.
Universal Pictures released “All My Life” in U.S. cinemas on December 4, 2020. The movie’s VOD release date is December 23, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles and Birmingham, Alabama, the comedy film “2 Minutes of Fame” has a predominantly African American cast (with a few white people and Latinos) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: An aspiring stand-up comedian has to decide between chasing his dreams or getting a “real job” to help support his family, and he gets entangled in a feud with a superstar comedian.
Culture Audience: “2 Minutes of Fame” will appeal primarily to people who like simple, predictable and often-raunchy comedies.
Keke Palmer, Jonny Berryman, Jay Pharoah and RonReaco Lee in “2 Minutes of Fame” (Photo by Claudette Barius/Codeblack Films/Lionsgate Films)
A lowbrow, low-budget comedy film like “2 Minutes of Fame” is usually so terrible that there’s hardly anything funny about it. But “2 Minutes of Fame,” despite being very predictable, has an endearing sweetness at the core of its raunchy humor. The movie (directed by Leslie Small) works best when it focuses on the competitive world of stand-up comedy rather than the relationship/family problems of the protagonist.
In “2 Minutes of Fame,” Jay Pharoah portrays Deandre McDonald, an aspiring stand-up comedian who’s been struggling to make a living in Birmingham, Alabama. Even though Deandre has 1 million followers on social media (he has his own YouTube comedy channel), his live-in girlfriend Sky (played by Keke Palmer) is carrying the financial weight of being the main income earner for their household. In addition to working full-time at a hospital, Sky is a nursing student. Deandre and Sky have a son named Jaylin (played by Jonny Berryman), who’s about 9 or 10 years old.
The movie begins with Deandre making a YouTube video ridiculing a superstar comedian named Marques (played by Katt Williams) who used to be respected and edgy but Marques has currently been making horrible movies that have unflattering stereotypes of African Americans. How big of a star is Marques? He can command $20 million a movie, but he’s the very definition of a “sellout,” since his movies make him look like a complete buffoon.
On his YouTube channel, Deandre makes fun of the movie trailer for Marques’ latest garbage movie, which is called “Secret Service Man.” In the trailer, Marques plays a bumbling Secret Service agent who takes a non-fatal bullet for a U.S. president who’s an obvious parody of Donald Trump. (Darrell Hammond plays the president in a very brief cameo.) Deandre has this reaction to the trailer by commenting on Marques’ role in the film: “How can I make the most money while selling out our people while still being terrible?”
Deandre’s video goes viral (116,000 views in one day), and Marques finds out about it. When a lackey asks Marques if they should get revenge on Deandre, Marques says Deandre isn’t worth the trouble because Deandre only has 1 million followers on social media, while Marques has 30 million. But will Deandre and Marques cross paths in real life? Of course they will.
Before that happens, Deandre is miserable and bored in his day job working as a clerk at a supermarket that resembles Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. He’d rather tell stand-up comedy jokes to customers than stock the shelves. When his manager Zena (played by Jess Hilarious) tries to get Deandre to go back to work, he and Zena get in a food fight where they throw fruit and vegetables at each other. Needless to say, Deandre gets fired.
The timing couldn’t be worse for Deandre to lose his job because he and Sky are running out of money. Their son Jaylin is taunted by his peers in his piano class for not having a piano at home. Deandre has been behind on a lot of payments, but he’s too proud to admit to anyone outside of his family that he’s nearly broke.
When Deandre picks Jaylin up from a piano class session, Jaylin’s piano teacher Ms. Ellyn (played by Valery Ortiz) tries to tactfully tell Deandre that Jaylin has fallen behind the rest of the students because Jaylin doesn’t have a piano at home to use for practice. Ms. Ellyn (whose hair is styled with huge bouffant bangs) could have been trying to be helpful, but she comes across as condescending, and Deandre is insulted.
“You need help with those bangs in front of your face,” he angrily tells Ms. Ellyn. While he storms out he also calls her a “broke-ass Rosie Perez” and a “Puerto Rican version of Janelle Monáe.” But getting Jaylin a piano is not going to happen at the moment because Deandre and Sky have bigger bills to pay. Not surprisingly, Sky is furious when she finds out that Deandre lost his job at the supermarket.
However, there’s a sliver of hope for Deandre to make money doing what he loves. His wisecracking best friend Eddie (played by RonReaco Lee) has surprised Deandre by telling him that he entered Deandre into a talent contest for aspiring stand-up comedians called Laugh Out Loud Comedy Showcase. The winner of the grand prize will get to go on a Laugh Out Loud world comedy tour with established comedians. The contest takes place in Los Angeles at the Laugh Out Loud nightclub, which will pay the travel/hotel expenses of the contestants from outside the Los Angeles area.
When Deandre finds out he’s been selected as one of the contestants, Sky is skeptical that Deandre can win the contest. She wants him to stay home and find another job instead. Deandre wants to go to Los Angeles and pursue his dream. Sky and Deandre get into a big argument about it. She gives Deandrea an ultimatum by saying that if he goes to Los Angeles, their relationship will probably be over when he gets back.
Deandre and Eddie go to L.A., but of course they face some major obstacles. Eddie (who’s been acting as Deandre’s manager) is horrified and embarrassed to find out that Deandre sold their first-class hotel accommodations, so they end up having to sleep in the vehicle that was provided for them on the trip. Next, they find out that Deandre’s got really stiff competition.
Luckily, he’s met someone who can help. Her name is Taylor (played by Andy Allo), who works as a hostess at the Laugh Out Loud comedy club where the contest is taking place. Taylor scores Deandre a last-minute late-night spot at another comedy club called the Comedy Basement, where he can try out his material before the contest.
Taylor and Deandre are immediately attracted to each other. He doesn’t tell her that he has a live-in girlfriend and son at home. All he’ll say about his relationship status is that “it’s complicated.” Will this cause problems later in the story? Of course it will.
The best parts of “2 Minutes of Fame” are the scenes involving the contest. The stand-up comedy scenes are realistic and the comedians are very funny. It’s obvious that the movie got real stand-up comedians (including Pharoah) instead of actors portraying stand-up comedians. That authenticity goes a long way.
Aside from jokes told on stage, “2 Minutes of Fame” also realistically addresses the generation gap between comedians who started their careers before social media existed and comedians who started their careers after social media existed. There’s a hilarious L.A. nightclub table conversation with Sinbad, Lunell and George Wallace (all playing themselves) talking with Marques about how many young comedians today think they can make it big just by being on YouTube instead of paying their dues in front of live audiences.
Sinbad comments on the days when he was a young comedian: “You know what a ‘follow’ used to be? Someone was going to kill you or [it meant] a sexual predator.” And in another scene, Taylor (who’s close to Deandre’s age) also agrees that the “old school” way is the better way to become a famous comedian, when she tells Deandre: “Y’all YouTubers don’t understand what an art stand-up is.”
The movie also does a good and sometimes hilarious job of addressing the racial and cultural issues that African American stand-up comedians face when they have to represent for their communities but not compromise their credibility by doing anything that would be considered “sell-out” or “race traitor” material. The movie also touches a little bit (but not enough) on the sexism that women experience in the male-dominated world of stand-up comedy. However, since the screenplay (written by Devon Shepard and Yamara Taylor) has a male protagonist and most of the cast members are men, it’s a pretty accurate reflection of today’s typical demographics for stand-up comedy.
All of the cast members do a good job with their roles. Pharoah’s Deandre character is kind of an irresponsible screw-up, but Pharoah makes him likable enough that his immaturity doesn’t become too grating. Williams is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially since some people find his speaking voice to be very annoying, but he’s believable as a jaded celebrity. Palmer does just fine in a somewhat typical role as an exasperated love partner.
“2 Minutes of Fame” is definitely not for very young children or people who are easily offended by cursing and vulgar humor. But for people who are mature enough and don’t mind this type of raunchiness, the movie gives a better-than-expected look at stand-up comedy on the nightclub level and has some genuine laugh-out-loud moments that will keep viewers reasonably entertained.
Lionsgate released “2 Minutes of Fame” on DVD, digital and VOD on June 16, 2020.
