Churrasco da Pesada

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.

The Cookout is a pretty lame comedy that really delivers nothing new. #1 NBA draft pick Todd Anderson's star is on the ascendant after signing to his home team, the New Jersey Nets. Trying to stay grounded in reality, he throws a big barbecue for his family, not realizing that mixing them with his new agents and reps might lead to a crazy afternoon. The plot is fairly simple, something similar to the Barbershop films. The Cookout fails to be like Barbershop though. Everyone that's at the cookout is a stereotype. The filmmakers apparently were trying to include every stereotype about blacks possible. The script is very weak and needed a lot of work. The acting wasn't very good either with the best being Queen Latifah. She is pretty much the only saving grace in this film. However, her role in this film is small and its hard to believe she helped with the writing. Tim Meadows and Danny Glover are also pretty good but they can't save this film. Other people worth mentioning are Meagan Good and Jonathan Silverman. Ja Rule does a terrible job and he pretty much kills the film. Farrah Fawcett is in the film for some reason and she does a decent job. Everyone else is very annoying and do a bad job of acting. On a side note, Queen Latifah's mom has a role and Eves role is more or a cameo. Lance Rivera directs his first film and hopefully he can improve. Barbershop talked about important issues however, The Cookout didn't as it just had cheap laughs and it was a pretty boring film. The runtime is only 97 minutes long. Even with the short runtime it drags a lot and most of the film is pretty unrealistic. The Cookout is defiantly not worth watching unless your really, really big fans of anyone involved. Rating 3/10, a boring and forgettable film.

i saw it the first night, for queen's first movie (that she produced) it was OK but i know her talent from previous movies and it could have been better. but i think that the main focus she was going for that family should always stick together. no matter how rich or poor you are your family will always be there for you. don't every let anyone or anything make you change for the worse. money isn't everything, it can't play you happiness. that you find with those you love and those who love you back for you and nothing else. like the character's best friend who always watch his games. his girlfriend was only in it for the money like most females are but his best friend was there before it all started and she loved him for just him.

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 **