Da Hip Hop Witch

I always thought that there was a line which filmmakers would not go below, as far as 'star power' movies go. Movies which rely on the fame of their lead actor/role as the main drawcard are rarely any good, but I always thought that there was a certain level of competence to them all. I've seen Vanilla Ice spout 'drop dat zero and get wit da hero' in 'Cool as Ice', and it was not pretty. I've seen Britney Spears recite poetry from her personal book in Crossroads, and that was not good either. And I've seen Hulk Hogan dressing up in a ballerina costume for 'Mr. Nanny' and that needs no comment. But all of these movies managed to maintain a certain level of competence. Granted, it was not a high one, but it was still there. And Da hip hop witch was the first movie I've ever seen which stooped below that line.

To try to give an outline of this movie (movie is a loose term as there is no story), it's necessary to first try to understand how it came about, otherwise an explanation of this mess of scenes would be incomprehensible. I can see numerous ways, but the most likely is that the director/writer is a friend of eminem, and came up with the idea of the hip hop witch as a take off. He probably took up a few minutes of eminem's time, and got him to speak about some hip hop witch, and then I'm guessing the idea grew from there, and he asked various rappers to comment on it. After a while he would have had a good 30 minutes of comments by rappers, some very famous, about the 'hip hop witch', and he figured that knocking together some half plot and releasing the 'star studded' film would mean instant success. This is only an hypothesis, but would explain what we have here.

And what do we have here? The answer is.A complete mess. We have eminem who is obviously improvising his entire speech, the thing would probably go on for a good 20 minutes and he continues to repeat his lines as he thinks of the next thing to say, changing his story as he goes along. The other rappers are no better, for people who are or were 'scared to death by the witch' they seem to find the whole thing remarkably funny, they laugh while describing their 'horrible near death experiences'. Most of the rappers feature fleetingly, ja rule would only be on screen for 30 seconds but is credited as the second lead actor, which was obviously for the 'star power' motive.

And then we have the other part of the movie, which fills it in making it a 'releasable' 80 minutes. We have the 5 kids who hear about the witch and go to jersey (I think) to hunt her down, we have a reporter who wants to dig up information about the hip hop witch, and we have the record producer who is secretly faking the whole hip hop witch thing while noone realises. These characters are all arbitrary and serve only to fill in time, we are treated to a long and pointless scene where the reporter argues about a promotion, another scene where she hides papers in the photocopy room, and then these groups start interacting to waste even more time. Then, we are informed the 'street don' has been killed, which I'm sure is terrible news, but it would be sadder if we knew who he was. This time wasting continues in this roundabout fashion which I find probably the most frustrating aspect of any movie, especially in an era when most filmmakers are unable to shorten their films below 2 hours. Just about the only interaction we do not see is anyone mentioned in this paragraph with any of the rappers. We see a reporter standing outside a door, saying 'we are outside shady studios, where eminem has locked himself inside for fear of the witch, allowing in only our cameraman', which just goes to show that he had no interest in making a good film or spending any time shooting. The rest of the rappers are exactly the same, only ever seen on camera giving conflicting evidence, never seen talking to anyone. This just further goes towards proving the hypothesis.

But the hypothesis really doesn't matter. What matters is that this is a terrible movie. The camerawork is awful, perhaps as they were aiming to imitate the blair witch project, but in that movie the camerawork was believably bad, in this the cameramen run circles and do gymnastics around the target, seemingly aiming to induce migrains. The acting is bad by the 'cast' and unspeakable by the rappers, who obviously do not care at all. The plot is non existent, the dialogue terrible, basically any aspect of filmmaking here either does not exist or is so bad it's not worth mentioning. One does begin to feel sorry for eminem as one can see that he was just joking during his 'performance', and had no idea that it would end up in this form. It's the nerve of whoever released this that really disgusts me, stooping to a level so low to make money based on eminem's face. Watching this film just really feels wrong, like it is so bad that it never should have been released. I do hope, and pray that nothing this bad will ever be made again, and can only recommend that noone waste their time on this plotless rubbish, unless they want to see a group of rappers improvising a string of 4 letter words. Disgraceful.

Da Hip Hop Witch (2000)

BOMB (out of 4)

Incredibly awful and rather pathetic "movie" about five idiot white people who go into the ghetto to look for the title creature. This witch just happens to stalks various rap artists so the white kids try to get famous by looking for her. This parody (?) of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is beyond awful in every way imaginable. The screenplay is awful. The acting is awful. The direction is awful. The entire intent of this thing is awful and for the life of me I can't understand what writer-director Dale Resteghini was trying to do other than get idiots like me to watch this film. What we've basically got is a bunch of scenes that make no sense thrown together and the "highlight" is seeing various hip hop artists talk about their encounter with the witch or stories they've heard about the witch. These include Eminem talking about how the witch tried to stick her butter finger up his butt. Really? Was this meant to be funny? Were we supposed to take this serious? Mobb Deep, Rah Digga, Pras, Killah Priest, Ja Rule and Vanilla Ice also show up. There's no question that this film wasn't made to try and win an Oscar but at the same time you'd hope for at least some cheap entertainment or fun. This movie really offers neither and it actually gets worse as it goes along. It's just mind-blowing that the director would make a film like this but, again, I'm sure it was for money. Even then, was there a reason for this to clock in at 90-minutes? The entire film looks incredibly cheap and from what I've read the director just pretty much showed up at the various artists' locations, threw them some money and then had them talk. It's clear none of them knew what the heck was going on as their stories just drag on and there's no point to any of them. DA HIP HOP WITCH is a complete piece of junk that probably ranks as the very worse I've ever seen. I at least can't think of another movie where less effort was done.

Clearly, this is one of the worst films ever made. I remember seeing the trailer, and thinking it looked funny. I'd wanted to see it for years. Weeks ago, I found the DVD at Price Chopper for 3 bucks. I decided to get it, and wish I hadn't. This has the most lame attempts at humor I have ever seen. And the f bomb is dropped abut 30 times each minute. The plot is non existent...there is no plat. Most of the film is just annoying rappers talking about their encounters with Da Hip Hop Witch. Eminem is in it, and I hear that he wanted to have copies of this movie erased after he actually became famous. Not sure if it is true, but it wouldn't surprise me. This movie is totally painful. I hated it. I regret buying it, and I regret it deeply. I know this movie looks kind of funny, and me saying it is so bad will want to make you see it more...but it's not worth it. Trust me.

Da Hip Hop Witch is quite an achievement in modern film making. Not only was it *not* released by New Concorde, it manages to make every movie I've ever seen that much better. You know how it is. You'll find yourself watching a crappy German movie with a dog taking a crap on a boat while some orchestral score rises in the background, and you'll turn to your friend, chuckle, and say, "Hey, at least it ain't Da Hip Hop Witch!"

I remember liking Vanilla Ice at one point. His goofy haircut, his sincere devotion to being on the streets... no more. He produced this movie. He is the core of this thing's existence. If ever there is a tribunal for crimes against humanity relating to film production, he should be the prime suspect.

As a side note, immediately after viewing, which killed every sense of joy I'd ever experienced in my life, I took the tape out of the VCR, opened the cover, and cut it. I suggest you cut the tape as a first step if you really want to see the best this movie has to offer.

I was forced to watch this by a friend after loosing a bet. The whole time I was thinking - please Lord take me home.... A brain haemorrhage would be a welcome escape - but no, we watched the entire film. The only reason to watch this crap is if you actually like the music being blasted out of the souped up honda civic ( you know the one - lime green with neon lights, 17" wheels, and tinted windows ) that cruises the mall parking lot on Friday night...