June 10, 2025
by Carla Hay

“Paradise Records”
Directed by Logic
Culture Representation: Taking place in Bend, Oregon, the comedy film “Paradise Records” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A down-on-his luck owner of a music store struggles to keep his business open, as he gets unexpectedly entangled with gangsters and bank robbers.
Culture Audience: “Paradise Records” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of writer/director/star Logic and 1990s stoner comedies, but “Paradise Records” is vastly inferior to movies it might get compared to, such as “Clerks” or “Friday.”

Filled with racist and homophobic dialogue, Paradise Records is a sewage dump of a comedy about a record store owner who needs money to save his failing business. Everything about this junkpile movie is obnoxious and dimwitted. Don’t be fooled by filmmaker Kevin Smith’s name being associated with this dreck because Smith is an editor and executive producer of “Paradise Records.” “Paradise Records” wants desperately to be a cult classic like Smith’s 1994 comedy film “Clerks,” but “Paradise Records” is the cinematic equivalent of a used diaper containing the unwanted waste of 1990s stoner comedies.
Written and directed by Logic (who’s best known as a music artist), “Paradise Records” (his feature-film directorial debut) had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. “Paradise Records” takes place in Bend, Oregon, where the movie was filmed on location. Predictably, some of Logic’s songs are part of the movie’s soundtrack, including “Bu Jam,” “Drink Too Much,” “Bad Motherfucker” and “Losing My Faith.”
In this putrid movie, Logic portrays Cooper, the owner of a record store called Paradise Records, which sells mostly vinyl records, even though this movie is supposed to take place in the mid-2020s. Cooper is $178,000 in debt and can’t get any more bank loans. The record store is on the verge of being evicted and going out of business.
Other people in Cooper’s emotionally stunted world are his employees who are in Cooper’s same age group of late 20s to mid-30s: T-Man (played by Traymane Hudson), Melanie (played by Mary Elizabeth Kelly), and Tables (played by Reed Northrup), who all have the personalities of slugs. Cooper also hangs out with his fellow stoner friends Sleydro (played by Tony Revolori) and Lil’ DimSome (played by Bobby Lee), who are stereotypical buffoons.
T-Man (whose real name is Tremaine) happens to be Cooper’s cousin, who has a semi-secret hobby of designing clothes that T-Man sews himself. Melanie and Tables are dating each other, but Cooper doesn’t approve of this relationship because he thinks Tables is too ugly for Melanie. Melanie’s response is to tell Cooper that everyone gets ugly when they’re old, so she might as well get accustomed to being with someone “ugly” before they both get old.
It’s mentioned way too many times in the movie that Cooper is biracial (his father is black, his mother is white), which is why he thinks he’s entitled to say the “n” word (the racial slur about black people) whenever he wants. Viewers will notice that Cooper embraces or announces his black racial identity only when it’s convenient for him. And expect to hear the “n” word a lot in “Paradise Records,” because Logic and the other “Paradise Records” filmmakers think that saying that word is automatically supposed to be funny.
It should come as no surprise that the movie depicts Cooper’s father JJ (played by Juicy J) as nothing but a negative stereotype of a black man: JJ is a drug user who calls himself a pimp and brags that he’s still able to get “good pussy” at his age. JJ isn’t in the movie for long, but if he were, the “Paradise Records” filmmakers probably would’ve invented more negative stereotypes for him, such as having a prison record and being a deadbeat dad to Cooper when Cooper was a kid.
Cooper’s racial identity isn’t his only identity where he has insecurity issues that he tries to hide by making derogatory comments about people who’ve been historically oppressed by hateful bigotry. Cooper won’t admit that he’s probably not heterosexual—even though he tells stories that he’s had consensual sexual encounters with other guys for fun. But then, he tries to distance himself from these encounters by making it sound like he didn’t initiate these encounters, thereby vilifying his male sex partners as predators.
Queer people who are mentioned or seen in “Paradise Records” are depicted as threats or punchlines to Cooper and his buddies. This insulting mockery is directed mostly at a loyal Paradise Records customer who is an African American drag queen. The customer’s drag queen name is Flawless and male name is Tajh (played by Tajh Jordan, also known as drag queen Flawless Shade), who says a lot of cringeworthy things that sound like they were written by someone who’s ignorant about drag queen culture.
People who are truly secure about their sexuality don’t need to degrade people of other sexualities. For this type of backwards and outdated filmmaking, the male protagonist (in this case, Cooper) tries to assert his sexual identity by being condescending and rude about queer people, but he thinks he can be excused because he’s been sexually intimate with guys. He just doesn’t want to thought of as one of those “queer people” if it puts him at a disadvantage or if he thinks it will lower other people’s opinions about him.
It’s the same attitude that Cooper has about racism against black people. Many people who don’t know Cooper assume that he’s white because of his physical appearance, and he rarely corrects this assumption unless it’s to get him out of a tough situation or it’s to give him an advantage. Cooper will usually tell people about the black part of his racial identity when he’s caught saying hate speech about black people, and an offended person is close to physically assaulting him over it.
As a filmmaker, it seems as if Logic (whose real name is Sir Robert Bryson Hall II) has very noticeable hangups about race and sexual identity because these prejudices are all over “Paradise Records” in tacky and mindless scenes. For example, the only people in “Paradise Records” who are objectified with nude scenes are black people in scenes where the audiences are supposed to be laughing at these black people. It doesn’t seem to be a coincidence, considering black people and queer people are the targets of the most derogatory language in “Paradise Records.”
In one scene, Cooper’s elderly uncle Tony (also played by Logic), who is white, shows up at the record store with a big-breasted, much-younger black girlfriend named Candelabra (played by Pauline Dorsey), who says she has an “old man” fetish. No one questions why Tony is with a woman who’s young enough to be his granddaughter, but Candelabra is depicted as the “kinky” one in the relationship. For no good reason at all, Candelabra’s blouse gets ripped away so her breasts are fully exposed. In another scene, Tajh runs out of a restroom with his naked behind exposed.
The movie makes an unconvincing attempt to present Cooper as a righteous human being. Cooper mentions more than once that he’s in debt because he continued to pay his employees’ salaries when the store had to be temporarily closed during the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cooper lost his apartment home as a result, so he’s been living at the record store. Cooper also rejects an offer from a local businessman named Mike Hawk (played by Martin Starr) to buy Paradise Records because Cooper thinks Mike will fire all of the Paradise Records employees if Mike becomes the store’s new owner. But all that “do-gooder” posturing is empty when Cooper shows himself to be awful in so many ways, as described above.
Cooper crosses paths with two unnamed “wise guy” gangsters (played by Kevin Corrigan and David Krumholtz), who are looking for Tony because Tony owes them $5,000. Later in the movie, two armed and masked bank robbers cause mayhem. The bank robbers are knuckleheads named Daryl (played by Nolan North) and Bobby (played by Oliver Tree), who are so incompetent, it doesn’t take them long to say each other’s names out loud in front of witnesses while committing their crimes. A waitress named Celeste (played by Dana Milligan), from a local diner, gets pulled into some of this mess.
“Paradise Records” is stuck on an irritating repeat loop of three types of “gags” that are about (1) glorifying racist language, usually racial slurs against black people; (2) excusing and encouraging homophobia; and (3) getting stoned, usually on marijuana. None of it is close to being clever or funny. The people who think this type of idiotic bigotry is hilarious are usually the same types of people who have the privilege of not being in the minority groups who are frequent targets of the hateful bigotry that pollutes this movie.
Celebrity cameos cannot erase the stench of all the loathsome filmmaking in “Paradise Records.” Smith and Jason Mewes make a quick and awkwardly placed appearance as their Silent Bob and Jay characters, who were first seen in “Clerks.” Joseph Gordon-Levitt has the role of a crisis negotiator in “Paradise Records.” Ron Perlman depicts a police chief. Rainn Wilson is briefly in the movie as an unnamed creepy guy.
It’s hard not to notice a demographic pattern of which celebrities chose to be involved in this abomination, assuming that they read the terrible screenplay before agreeing to be part of this shameful project. No self-respecting black celebrity or self-respecting queer celebrity would want to be in “Paradise Records,” which has blatant disrespect for black people and queer people. In real life, less than 1% of the population of Bend is black/African American (according to the U.S. Census), so “Paradise Records” isn’t doing the black people in Bend any favors by depicting black people in Bend as habitual drug users or sexual “freaks.”
Apart from the poorly written screenplay and mediocre-to-bad acting, “Paradise Records” has no taste or creative style in the technical aspects of filmmaking. The cinematography is unremarkable. The film editing is erratic, with some pacing that drags, and some pacing that’s too rushed. The first half of “Paradise Records” is a compilation of stupid sketches. The second half is a sloppy amalgamation of run-ins with gangsters and bank robbers. All of it adds up to time-wasting garbage.