Whiteboyz

Being from Iowa, I am usually offended by stereotypical portrayals of Iowans as dumb farmers, oblivious to the real world. That said, I really liked this movie. Part of it is the fun of seeing familiar places and landmarks (bridges, bars, cop cars, local personalities), but I also was intrigued by the story.

Most reviews I've read about this movie criticize the makers for trying to run on one joke for 90 minutes. Instead, I think the audience laughs because the characters (especially Flip) are trying so pitifully hard. Flip is like any teenager (in Iowa or elsewhere) who's searching for his spot in the world. He doesn't like his life (what teenager does?) and he is drawn to the "idea" of the ghetto he gets from music videos. His fantasies are so opposite from what he knows -wealth, women, recognition. In his fantasy world, everyone fits into the slots he gives them with no questions. The problem is he can't separate his fantasy from reality, and when reality slaps him in the face (Chicago) he is forced to take a look at who he really is - a faulted, bigoted, everyday person.

It's hard to face our faults, and the filmmakers must use an exaggerated character with exaggerated actions in an extreme situation to make this seem less like a cheesy story about some loser wannabes with no clue and more like a paradoxical look at facing ourselves. Without this movie's extreme and often sad backdrop, I would write it off as another "we're more cultured than you, aren't Iowans dumb" story. Instead, I think this is a smart, biting story that challenges us to take a look past what we want everyone else to see and examine who we are underneath, faults and all.

I've caught this film several times on cable networks and found myself glued to it wherever it happens to land. Danny Hoch is totally mesmerizing as Flip, the misguided white boy who wishes he were black. Much of the humor is sadly pathetic but also entirely poignant. I happen to be among those who think that hip hop has been a disaster for the youth of America and the world. I originally thought that rap would be a doorway to literature and poetry, but instead it has proved itself to be an excuse for thuggish behavior. The values of the hip hop culture seem to me to be materialistic and shallow. Flip and his crew journey off to Chicago where they end up in one of the nastiest reality checks that could have possibly imagined. This is a wildly entertaining flick, very funny and very sad.

i can understand why the makers of this film would want to exaggerate the situation, but i didn't think it need to be set in Iowa. as previous users have mentioned, Iowa is not drug- and black-free, but its image is of wholesome, all-white nostalgia. i didn't really buy Danny Hoch's Flip as an Iowa native, he still sounds too Brooklyn. i think it would have been better if it taken place in Jersey, but i understand the director's desire to show just how far Flip stretches.

That said, i think it's a brilliant, if flawed, movie. it spends a bit too much time watching Flip do his misguided thing, before getting to the climax in Cabrini-Green. Hoch is great at affecting that 'what the hell is going on?' look, and tho this may sound weird, he doesn't overplay the character, except when he's in full blown hip hop mode. other than that his character is completely believable. he nails that character so well, the guy we've all known who has some idea in his head so large he can't hear anything else. Until he takes it too far.

Someone needed to make a movie like this, a commentary on how white suburban teenagers have latched onto hip-hop and "ghetto" culture, and made it part of their identity, when in reality they don't have a solitary clue of what it means to be Black in America. Someone needed to make a movie that made the point that white America's affinity for Black culture rarely translates into actual understanding of Black people as actual human beings, or into an understanding of their situation. Someone needed to make a movie that showed hip-hop-as-consumed-by-white-kids as what it is: a new version of a very old theme in American popular culture -- the Black man as dirty savage, cunning and dangerous, yet stupid and witless at the same time.

But "Whiteboys" is not this movie. The movie can't seem to decide if it's a comedy or a cutting social commentary, or both. So it fails as both. The central problem is that the main characters are stereotypes themselves, the East Coast-imagined version of what someone in Iowa is supposed to be like. It's impossible to believe that Flip and his gang are for real. Flip especially comes off as a delusional mental patient, not as a misguided, out-of-touch kid. The images of farm life were as cartoonish as the images of hip hop life the movie was mocking. Perhaps this was part of the point, but all of the overlapping of targets of parody just made the whole matter confusing.

The movie would have been much better off if had ditched the whole Iowa-farmer theme, stopped reveling in stupid images of kids rapping in farm fields, and instead focused on a group of kids in Any-Suburb USA, the kind of kids that we all have met -- privileged white kids who are drawn to the false glamor of ghetto life presented on TV, utterly oblivious to their own privileged station in life.

I get the feeling that this film might've been advertised as a comedy, but yes, it does border on some serious issues that should be acknowledged.

Still, there are several scenes in WHITEBOYS that had me busting up, most notably Flip's daydreaming sequences, which has him imagining about being accepted by urban thugs just because he's "down" with hip-hop.

Overall,I ended up being impressed by this film. Well acted, well written, and well filmed. I would'nt mind catching it again!