The Monkey Hu$tle

If a white producer and a white screenwriter got together to produce a film for a black audience anytime before the bicentennial, then this would be the product. The language and expressions are so exaggerated as to be excessively comic, then again perhaps this was the intended effect (though I doubt it).

I'm reminded of the final scenes of Robert Townsend's "Hollywood Shuffle," where he plays a struggling actor who just got the lead in a low budget blaxpoitation production "Jive Time Jimmy's Revenge." Townsend is supposed to have an uncredited bit part in "The Monkey Shuffle," and one is almost certain that he was referencing the ridiculous direction given the actors in "The Monkey Shuffle." A true homage to demonstrate how shallow cross cultural understanding was at the time. An understanding made clear in this film.

With lines like "You sho-is bad!" and "Yo my main man!" one can't help but wonder how the guys at MST3K missed "The Monkey Shuffle" (probably because of the race angle; it being bad form and all to make fun of a black, or blaxpoitation, film). The story revolves around a band of two-bit hustlers, shuckin' and jivin' their way to the big time. Only they're supposedly stymied by a municipal urban renewal plan, that bulldozes their base of operations. A plan that's supposed to put a highway through the neighborhood. Too bad this wasn't played up in the film, because if you miss the few minutes of dialogue and other exposition given to the plot you'll miss it entirely. Not that you really need to know it, because it's hardly significant in the story.

There's lots of character development, but it's all one dimensional. The haircuts and costumes are laughable, and the plot doesn't come into play until the end of the film. Much of the movie is spent exploring the petty exploits of the "players," and "players" in training, and does nothing to develop either plot or story.

Well, it's been a while since I've heard expressions like "sho 'nuff" or "turkey" or even "sucka," so from a linguistics point of view it was kind of fun seeing paleolithic jive talk in action, but beyond that there's not much to offer here.

The film itself is supposed to be some kind of comedy, but I found myself hard pressed to laugh at anything other than the dated speech, costumes, and extreme mannerisms given by the characters.

If you want to see Blaxpoitation, then rent one of the better known Pam Grier, Jim Kelley, or Shaft films. Your brain'll thank you for it.

One has to remember, that with the introduction of Shaft and Superfly, Hollywood churned out one blaxploitation film after the other, whether the script and acting succeeded or not. During the 70's, at the height of the blaxploitation film era, the genre was completely plot-driven rather than character-driven. Ask yourself how many times a neighborhood could be saved from some type of demolition? How many times could someone come up with just the right lottery numbers? Take this film for what it is, something lighthearted that introduced actor/director Thomas Carter, II, Debbi Morgan of All My Children, Charmed, The Hurricane, Rosalind Cash of The Omega Man, General Hospital, and Tales from the Hood, Randy Brooks of Another World and Generations. And, of course, Rudy Ray Moore. These actors had to eat, support families, and it was training ground for some later great work.

Rudy Ray Moore was splashed all over the poster art for this movie, so I was expecting another embarrassingly unintentionally hilarious film along the lines of DOLOMITE or DISCO GODFATHER, but this was actually a pretty good movie outside of Rudy, in his few scenes as a supporting character, try to act alongside legitimate actors like Yaphet Kotto. THE MONKEY HU$TLE reminded me of an urban AMERICAN GRAFFITI that was aspiring to be COOLIE HIGH. It's not quite that good, but it does a good job of making this neighborhood feel like a real place populated by a bunch of characters you'd like to spend time with. There's the neighborhood con man, the local cop, the mischievous group of teens, another group of younger kids, and the local player "Goldie," played badly in the most unintentionally hilarious manner by Rudy Ray Moore. Yaphet steals the movie anytime he's on-screen as the neighborhood con man. There's not a really strong narrative throughline. The closest thing to a plot is there's a new highway planned to go through their Chicago neighborhood, so various community members band together to stop it, culminating in a neighborhood block party. However, for the most part, we're simply following around a bunch of different characters doing their thing in a series of vignettes, kind of like DAZED AND CONFUSED, but nowhere as well as that film. Directed by Arthur Marks, who also directed BUCKTOWN, DETROIT 9000, and FRIDAY FOSTER, it's a competently crafted film and was always entertaining, even if the story meandered and lacked a strong narrative.

A new highway threatens a Chicago neighborhood, so to protest the residents throw a block party.

Roger Ebert gave the film one-and-half stars (out of four), calling it a "good-hearted muddle" but opining that "they must have left half the script back in Hollywood." Ebert did note with pleasure that the film's business justified opening the balcony at the now-demolished Roosevelt Theater, where he had not sat in four years. He is spot-on here. The film never really seems to have a direction and just sort of meanders. This can work on occasion, but does not seem to here.

In 2009, "Black Dynamite" star and co-writer Michael Jai White cited "The Monkey Hu$tle" as a major influence, telling the Los Angeles Times, "It was just brash, unlike anything I'd ever seen... I remember these bigger-than-life characters, who reminded me of my uncles, and it was the first time I saw anything familiar in my life on the big screen." This adds a little weight to the film that it does not provide itself, as "Black Dynamite" is truly impressive.

The main thing one needs to know about "The Monkey Hu$tle" is that it makes absolutely no sense at all.None. Zero. It doesn't even have anything remotely resembling a plot until the last fifteen minutes, and even then, the "plot" is so thin as to almost be nonexistent. So yes, this is a bad film.

However, the cast is fantastic, in that you have a lot of familiar 70s faces doing their thing with the bad material they are given. The great Yaphet Kotto leads the way, and behind him are Rudy Ray Moore, Rosalind Cash, Thomas Carter, the gorgeous Debbi Morgan, and others you will recognize from 70s blaxploitation films and TV shows.

As entertaining as the cast is, it's hard to imagine any of them knew what the heck they were actually acting in, and probably just took it scene-by-scene according to the script, never really knowing all the context. I can't imagine any of them reading the script and saying "What a plot, this looks good I'll do it." Instead, it was probably more like "What a mess, but I have a lot of scenes, I'm in." Or simply just doing it for the paycheck.

The film was shot in Chicago so there are a lot of interesting location scenes, and the film is shot halfway decently. Those things, and the cast, do make the film fun to look at. However this is a real mess due to the missing "plot" but it is worth a viewing for the pluses. You'll never watch it again, tho'.