The Wood (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com Member: Online Film Critics Society
** out of four
"I'll give you a dollar if you grab her booty!"
Starring Omar Epps, Sean Nelson, Taye Diggs, Trent Cameron, Richard T Jones, Duane Finley. Rated R.
Films featuring adults reminiscing about times and friends they had when they were kids have the potential to be tremendously effective. When done right, they can be sad (Stand By Me had me in tears), funny, nostalgic and just plain terrific. But as is the case with every genre, there is no foolproof formula for making a good movie. With its constant ineptitude, The Wood demonstrates that for every winner there's a dud.
We are introduced to the people with whom we are about to spend two hours when they actually start talking to us. Omar Epps (The Mod Squad) kicks off the movie by speaking directly into the camera, introducing himself as "Big Mike". You see, Roland, one of Mike's best friends, is about to be married -- only he's nowhere to be found. His other friend, Slim, is terribly nervous (in fact, when he sees Mike speaking he blurts out "Who the hell you talking to?"). It's not long before the story goes into flashback, as the three buddies fondly recall their adolescent years in "The Wood" ("not what you think," says Mike, although what you may be thinking soon becomes a recurring motif; what is being referred to is the town of Inglewood, California, a suburb of LA).
The Wood tracks the girl-chasing adventures of the three teenagers. From a booty-grabbing contest that gets Mike into trouble with a nasty big brother to an American Pie-ish who-shall-get-nookie-first contest, this movie seems concerned solely with the boys' relationships with the fairer gender.
I wish this film had explored more than one aspect of the potentially interesting lives of these characters. A movie solely about "gettin' some" can be immensely entertaining when it is said film's sole focus, like in American Pie. Here, however, we get a movie that is supposedly the story of the friendships of these three people when they were young. Thus, it is disheartening to see it refuse to do anything interesting with that scenario. The extent of The Wood's versatility is the characters' choice of breath mints.
The first hour of this veritable sap-o-rama entertains, with some funny gags and affecting moments. But then The Wood falls apart. At nearly two hours its at least half an hour too long and it begins to repeat itself. The same jokes turn up more times than we find it fitting to laugh at them. Before we know it, what we've wound up with is yet another retread of the Horny Teenager Movie even though its first hour lead us to believe otherwise.
The characters are exclusively one-dimensional as are, for the most part the performances from the six leads. The standout, is Omar Epps as adult Mike, whose performance is sincere. Sean Nelson who plays young Mike has an annoying fish-out-of-water quality: the story calls for him to make us believe that his character has just moved from North Carolina to California and doesn't know anyone or anything there. He goes one better: he makes us think his character just moved from Venus.
The Wood is a movie with a one-track mind, which is unfortunate because had it tried to develop other aspects of its characters it may have been a fascinating character study. As it is, it's a mildly diverting, seldom entertaining piece of alleged nostalgia that doesn't seem very nostalgic at all. ©1999 Eugene Novikov‰
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