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1999 was a great year for film, especially when it came to creating refreshingly original scripts. Whether it involved journeys through the brains of superstars or amphibians falling from the sky, screenwriters upped the ante in '99, showing that stuff like The Out-of-Towners and Wild Wild West just don't cut it anymore. Tired stories, usually remakes or film versions of television shows, floundered at the box office, while repeat business for movies like The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project signaled the public's exhaustion with the same ol' same ol'.
Gotcha. Forget that whole paragraph. This is 2000, baby. The 21st century (for those of you that can't count). The Willennium. And what's the first film that comes our way? A harebrained sequel of a movie that was, at best, mediocre. No, I'm not talking about Shaft Returns or Blade 2 (they aren't until later this year). The film in question is Next Friday, a lifeless follow-up to the 1995 underachiever Friday.
Friday wasn't totally devoid of entertainment value. In fact, it was often pretty funny. The plotless mess didn't perform too admirably at the box office, but it was a huge video rental and is probably best known for launching the career of Chris Tucker (Money Talks). Friday also boosted the careers of Boyz in the Hood co-stars Nia Long and Regina King, and was the directorial debut of the marginally talented F.Gary Gray, who later found success helming Set it Off and The Negotiator. But Tucker, Long, King and Gray are all absent from this miserable project.
Making a sequel to Friday without Tucker is like Thanksgiving without the turkey. But, speaking of turkey, Ice Cube returns from the original film, and he's as plump and round as a Butterball bird. Mr. Cube (Three Kings) reprises his role of Craig Jones, a dumpy, perpetually unemployed, wannabe playa from the hood in south central Los Angeles.
In Friday, Craig and his sidekick Smokey (Tucker) had to raise $200 to keep the neighborhood bully Deebo (Tom 'Tiny' Lister Jr.) from kicking the crap out of them. As the film ended, Craig beat Deebo with a brick and became somewhat of a neighborhood hero as the tyrant was hauled off to prison. Next Friday's story is remarkably similar to its predecessor. In fact, you just have to replace the following words:
· Change `hood' to `suburbs' · Change `Smokey' to `cousin' · Change `$200' to `$3,800' · Change `neighborhood bully' to `property tax collector' · Change `kicking the crap out of them' to `foreclosing on their house'
It's just that simple. The sequel takes place years after the original, and the hapless Craig is still unemployed, his buddy Smokey is conveniently in rehab, his foul-bowel dad is still catching dogs and his arch-enemy Deebo is still in the clink. But the word on the street is that Deebo plans to bust out of the joint and mess up Craig real good. So, to protect his son, Mr. Jones (John Witherspoon) decides to send his boy to live with his brother Uncle Elroy (Don `D.C.' Curry).
A recent resident of the hood, Uncle Elroy escaped his past by winning a cool million in the lottery and paying cash for a giant house on a cul-de-sac in posh Rancho Cucamonga. Or, as Craig says after rolling up on his peeps crib, `fake-ass Brady Bunch.' Of course, the secluded street still offers both a love interest (Tamala Jones, Blue Streak) and an antagonistic Latino family as neighbors. No wonder the only white person in the whole film is the guy that delivers the notice that Uncle Elroy's house is being foreclosed on due to delinquent taxes. And the white guy (Michael Rapaport) doesn't even appear in the credits.
The strange thing about the Friday films is that the characters can never think of an original way to get the money they need to get out of trouble. In the first film, Craig never even got the cash, and the sequel is nearly as stupid in that regard. Films like Risky Business or The Brady Bunch or even Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo offer characters that are motivated to earn those frogpelts. I guess that's what you get when you have a rapper write the script to your film.
Next Friday is the directorial debut of Steve Carr and, quite frankly, the film shows the uneven pacing of a novice. Toss in Day-Day's psycho pregnant ex-girlfriend and her chubby sidekick sister, a killer pit-bull, numerous pot scenes and a flurry of cheap jokes and derogatory female characters, and you've basically got yourself an R-rated, three-part episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Hey, I warned you that it was the Willennium.
1:35 - R for adult language, drug use and deviant sexual content
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