The Wood (R) *** Starring Omar Epps, Sean Nelson Directed by Rick Famuyiwa A Review by Frankie Paiva
To begin with, I certainly felt out of place sitting in the audience at The Wood, a movie that not only is good, but will pleasantly surprise you. Not only is there not one Caucasian cast member, (not even in a cameo) I was also part of the minority of the five white people sitting in my auditorium.
Slim, (Richard T. Jones) Roland, (Taye Diggs) and Mike (Omar Epps) are all gathered at a wedding that Roland is supposed to be at. He's at an old girlfriend's house, drunk as ever, having second thoughts about giving up his old wild lifestyle to settle down with one woman.
This begins a whole set of flashbacks that are intervened nicely from the 80s to present day. While it's not quite plausible how the flashbacks begin, it's a cute way to make a movie, and they pull it to it's fullest extent. Young Mike (Nelson, who steals the show) has just moved from North Carolina and has his eyes set on Alicia (Malinda Williams) while his buddies try to rack up telephone numbers. Despite the fact that Alicia's brother (De'aundre Bonds) is an abusive gang member. Amazingly, it manages to do this without too many racial stereotypes.
Another nice thing about The Wood is that you feel like your a part of the movie. In beginning sequences Mike talks right into the camera and acknowledges that we are there, watching everything that's happening to the characters. While this isn't anything original or inventive, it does add a nice touch. It also has several gags that seem taken right out of a toned down American Pie, so for that, and the fact that I was taken aback by how good it was. The Wood earns my *** stars.
A Review by Frankie Paiva The 12 Year-Old Movie Reviewer E-Mail me at SwpStke@aol.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews