WOO A film review by Matt Williams
RATING: * out of * * * *
Daisy v.S. Mayer directs this blind date comedy that's more uncomfortable than a bad date. Boring, uninteresting and pointless, the film wastes both its talent and your time.
Woo is the name given to Jada Pinkett Smith's free-spirited character. Beautiful and smart, she's also a handful...so much so that her cousin Claudette (Paula Jai Parker), with whom she's staying, schemes to get her out of the apartment for one night. She asks her husband Lenny (Dave Chappelle) to set up a blind date between his friend Tim (Tommy Davidson) and Woo.
Tim is a legal assistant studying for the bar, and a very nice guy. Too nice, or so his friends think. His last girlfriend used and abused him, and now, on the rebound, he reluctantly agrees to the blind date.
Of course, the blind date turns into the disastrous date from hell. But it's not all bad...at least they didn't have to sit though a movie like Woo. Woo is never groundbreakingly awful. Well, ok...the chicken sex fetishist was disturbingly bad, but the movie is more bland than horrible. The film is packed with endless unfunny setups that lead nowhere. You're sure that there's going to be a payoff soon...but it just never comes.
Jada Pinkett Smith deserves a better film than this one. Her role here has some substance, but it is lost in the morass of the film's bungled attempts at humor. Tommy Davidson fills the needs of his role: nice but boring. There's not much to be said for the supporting cast. Tim's trio of buffoonish friends particularly suffer from the film's lack of humor.
The film is not "Run Away!" bad, but it is bad...and not one which I would recommend to anyone besides an insomniac.
Copyright 1998 Matt Williams
- Matt Williams (matt@cinematter.com) Reviewer for Cinematter: http://www.cinematter.com Home of over 500 reviews, and information on over 600 upcoming releases
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