The Cookout

It's silly, it's obnoxious, it's predictable, it's mindless and I loved every frame! It's your basic young man who comes into money too soon and starts spending it (cause of an obnoxious climber of a girlfriend), much to the dismay of his mother. The fact that he has to seek an endorsement on the weekend of the family barbecue upsets the uptight girlfriend but that leaves the door open for the lovely Eve.

Queen Latifah is marvelous, as is Jennifer Lewis (fabulous!) and all the other cast. Danny Glover is stunningly campy and Farrah Fawcett is still very funny. Jonathan Silverman is good but my favorite is Marci Reid, who plays the repressed Miss Peters and gets all the laughs the fish out of water should get! She holds her own with the rest of the cast and gets the big laughs.

It's a funny movie. Check it out.

All ethnic groups have to suffer under various stereotypes, especially in "entertainment". After all, lampooning is a long-lived trope. That doesn't mean you can't take that stereotype and do something good, meaningful, entertaining, funny or informed with it. This movie most emphatically does none of those things. And the sad part is that there are good actors working here,like one of Farrah Fawcett's last roles, or Danny Glover or. Tim Meadows. Or Jennifer Lewis. Instead, this is a bad mishmosh of racist stereotypes, overacted-by-underactor humorless "jokes" and negative sexist characterizations. Just so you know, this was to be a "star vehicle" for "Storm P". I know you've heard of him. Right? Right? Yeah, neither had I and just as well. Oh, to give the movie "street cred" it also has Ja Rule. Yay, right? All I can say is that as insulting as some (not all) '70s blaxploitation flicks were, this isn't even the underarm hair thereof.

The movie had a good message about being responsible and down to earth even after hitting pay dirt. But, the message was nearly drowned in the cheesy delivery. As a result, this ethnic comedy comes off somewhat spoofish because of the mugging and overacting (which obviously was on purpose).

I think of The Cookout (2004) as (one of the characters in the movie so aptly put it) a "Black Beverly Hillbillies," like the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) that was definitely satirical. Although it is true that the stereotypes were carried to the extreme, which explains why some viewers are offended by the material, the same could be said of other spoofs, which purposely border on the ridiculous.

The Cookout (2004) is okay to rent, if you take if for what it is.

You know, this would have been a good TV movie.

I once read that if you want to watch a movie and just to be entertained, then take your brain out and relax. I thought this movie would fit into this category. When I first saw the trailers, and bits and pieces of the movie I thought it was worth watching. So I did. To be honest I was disappointed.

With all of the big names like Danny Glover, Farrah Fawcett, Jenifer Lewis, Queen Latifah, and Frankie Faison to name a few, I had thought this would be great. At best I felt the movie was slow and the lines delivered as if they were being read.

As for the morality of the movie, one could argue it set the tone for being responsible about money. But I also saw a contradiction in moral and racial issues. The first issue is the smoking of marijuana. To see a "judge", Danny Glover smoking it, what does this say about the real world? The movie played on the fears of predominately white segregated, walled communities. At least that part was true.

The third item was in regards to the black male and white female role in an interracial marriage. Why in the end was everyone happy to see Danny Glover (Judge Crowley) dominate his white wife, Farrah Fawcett (Mrs. Crowley), yet Frankie Faison (JoJo Anderson) is submissive to his wife Jenifer Lewis (Lady Em)? Does this mean that all black men in an interracial marriage should be "Master and Commander?" Does this state that black men marry outside of their race because the black woman is too strong and dominant? Does this mean that all white females become submissive when dominated by a black man? I don't think so as I am in an interracial marriage and took offense to those messages.

With the above aside, I took my brain out and tried to just be entertained. I laughed through a few parts, and the rest of the plot I could see through. Would I see it again? Maybe.

I had expected more with all of the big names and maybe this is the problem.

This movie is very so-so.(i.e. the acting, directing, story)

This movie has a lot of dislikeable characters the first moment you see them which made this movie a little hard to watch. Also a lot of streotypes of whites. I was surprised I didn't see any watermelon eating in this movie. The plot is, a basketball player (Storm P) wants to have the annual family cookout in his new house surrounded by "WHITE PEOPLE" who believe he is a "GANG BANGER". His mother (Jennifer Lewis) was the first dislikeable character to me. Because she is always yapping her mouth like she does in every movie shes in. This movie also did not flow well. For example, something could be happening and then maybe one character has to leave and go do something. They never show what happens after that character does after. It was like this movie had a thousand deleted scenes.Just like Johnson Family Vacation, which was a bad movie cause it was trying to be a National Lampoon film.In summary, it was a lot worse than I expected. I think Storm P(Quran Pender), Ja Rule, Queen Latifah, & Tim Meadows kept this movie watchable.

6/10 **