June
27, 2001
| After trudging through the swamplands of Florida for his incendiary
Rosewood and parading through the mean streets of Manhattan for
his reconstituted Shaft, John Singleton has returned to his roots
in South Central L.A. for Baby Boy.
Intended
as a companion piece to Boyz N the Hood, the astonishingly self-assured
1991 debut feature that established him as a 23-year-old wunderkind,
Singleton's latest effort is in many ways a far less polished piece
of work. Indeed, while Baby Boy actually is Singleton's sixth
credit as writer-director, it plays more like the product of an unseasoned
but furiously passionate neophyte, one who is still struggling to find
his own voice even as he shouts at the top of his lungs. At once brazen
and heartfelt, it is an unstable mix of didacticism and melodrama, soap
opera and broad comedy - and it sometimes fuses all these things, and
more, into the fabric of a single scene. Sympathetic viewers repeatedly
risk whiplash while maneuvering through its wild and frequent mood swings.
To
put it bluntly, but not dismissively, Baby Boy is a mess. And
yet, to a large degree, its ungainliness is forgivable, as it reflects
a breadth of ambition, not a failure of talent. If Singleton doesn't
make things easy for us, that's probably because this wasn't an easy
movie for him to make. He's obviously struggling here to sort out his
conflicted feelings about the issues he's raising and the situations
he's dramatizing in his coming-of-age story about a feckless African-American
homeboy who must be dragged, kicking and screaming, toward adulthood.
Unlike Hood, his new movie isn't, strictly speaking, autobiographical.
But Baby Boy leaves you with a strong impression that Singleton
sees much of himself, and has invested much of himself, in his lead
character.
Tyrese
Gibson, an exceptionally photogenic model, singer and MTV VJ, acquits
himself impressively in his first starring role as Jody, an aimless
20-year-old who has already fathered two children by pliant "baby
mamas," but still lives at home with his own mother. During the
opening minutes of Baby Boy, Jody accompanies one of the baby
mamas, Yvette (Taraji P. Henson), to an abortion clinic. (Even though
the young woman loves Jody, she's not about to make the same mistake
twice.) But he's not sensitive enough, or even patient enough, to stick
around and offer comfort after they return to her place. He borrows
her car keys, and takes off.
Despite
this evidence to the contrary, Jody isn't entirely benighted. He recognizes
that, without a job or a goal or anything like a sense of direction,
he is going nowhere fast. At the same time, however, he grudgingly admits
that, as long as Juanita (A.J. Johnson), his mother, is unwilling to
boot him out of their South Central home and into an independent life,
he isn't likely to make the first move of his own accord.
Singleton
vividly renders Jody's indolence - maybe a little too vividly, but never
mind - by revealing how the young man imagines himself as fully grown
but only semi-conscious in his mother's womb. Unfortunately, Jody isn't
nearly so self-aware when he's wide awake. Still, he stumbles forward.
He tries his hand at entrepreneurship, selling stolen dresses to women
throughout his neighborhood. And in a jarringly funny scene that underscores
the staggering extent of his chutzpah, Jody offers some self-improvement
advice to his children's mothers. ("Hey, watch some PBS or something!")
Ultimately,
Jody is propelled toward maturity, or something like it, by forces beyond
his control. Much of that force is provided by his mother's new beau:
Melvin (Ving Rhames), a smooth-talking, sharp-dressing ex-convict who
claims, not altogether convincingly, to have renounced his violent past.
Jody bitterly resents the older man's presence, and his worst fears
are confirmed when Melvin moves in. He rightly suspects that it's only
a matter of time before his mother decides the house isn't big enough
for the three occupants. (A nice touch: The movie tacitly acknowledges,
but never overstates, the sexual tensions not so far beneath the surface
of the bond between the attractive young single mother - who appears
to be, at most, in her mid-30s -- and her hunky 20-year-old son.) Sure
enough, Juanita soon starts to drop hints that it's time Jody left the
nest.
For
his part, Melvin tries to teach Jody a thing or two about the downside
of thug life. When Jody refuses to listen, Melvin expresses himself
non-verbally. (Rhames is terrific at conveying how Melvin's easygoing
manner is sustained only through sheer force of will.) But even then,
Jody has to learn some things on his own, the hard way.
Like
many other films about young African-American males at risk- including,
of course, Boyz N the Hood -- Baby Boy percolates with
the constant threat of sudden, lethal violence. For the most part, however,
Singleton avoids the usual clichés and stereotypes that have
become associated with what might be called the "hood" genre.
Only in the final half-hour, when Yvette's former boyfriend (played,
with sneering conviction, by rapper-actor Snoop Dogg) returns from prison
to make a nuisance of himself, does the movie resort to gunplay to propel
its plot. And even then, the mayhem is presented without exploitation
or glamorization - Jody, it turns out, is a bad shot, and an even worse
gang-banger - while Singleton maintains his focus on the evolution of
character, not the accumulation of victims.
At
heart, Baby Boy is about how some young black men grow up without
fathers, how they are raised by mothers who mean well, but who permit
their sons to indefinitely delay adulthood. The movie is sometimes hilarious,
sometimes deeply affecting, and just about always fascinating as it
shows how these young men improvise their way through family ties and
responsibilities without the benefit of older male role models.
At
first, Jody's best friend, Sweetpea (well played by Omar Gooding, brother
of Cuba Gooding Jr.), appears to be nothing more than comic relief.
As the movie progresses, however, Sweetpea reveals an unexpectedly deep
yearning for the stability of a nuclear family, even as he blusters
through an argument with his girlfriend and her mother.
Later,
after Jody is beaten and robbed by some young neighborhood punks, Sweetpea
is enraged - not so much because the punks attacked his friend, but
because they "didn't respect their elders." Reflexively practicing
the tough-love discipline of a stern paterfamilias, Sweetpea takes off
his belt and thrashes one of the chief offenders. Which, when you think
about it, is a sign of Sweetpea's own advancement toward maturity. After
all, he doesn't take his gun and blow the little punk's head off.