In some respects, ``I Got The Hook-Up'' could be accurately described as an incredible film.
It is, for example, incredible to think that anyone involved in this production received a paycheck for his participation: Rank amateurs rarely receive compensation.
It's equally incredible to discover that this film was the work of an African-American writer: You'd have to attend the Ku Klux Klan film festival to find more degrading images of blacks in one sitting.
The shiftless, trash-talking heroes of ``I Got The Hook-Up'' are Black (Master P) and Blue (A.J. Johnson), a pair of ghetto hustlers who sell suspect goods out of their broken-down van. Though the task of continually showering their perturbed customers with profanity and insults takes up most of their working day, Black and Blue still manage to take time out to steal a few boxes of cellular phones from a geeky deliveryman.
But, here's the big joke: The phones don't work properly. Now everybody's mad at Black and Blue, and everywhere they go, people chase them and yell. Imagine what a stitch that is.
You could get as many laughs staying home and listening to a dial tone for 90 minutes.
But if ``Hook-Up'' were merely unfunny, that wouldn't be a serious offense. Instead, the screenplay by Master P incorporates such knee-slapping elements as violence against women (one gets throttled by thugs, and another is told by her boyfriend, ``Remind me when we get home to whup your ass''), racism against Asians, anti-Caucasian wisecracks, jokes about how funny it is to torment the developmentally disabled, and generous helpings of homophobia as a transvestite hooker cruises for clients.
Not every female character in ``Hook-Up'' is a drug addict, a hooker or a stripper: Some of them are merely promiscuous airheads wanting to be taken advantage of.
If representatives from either NOW or GLADD bothered to watch this film, You can bet ``Hook-Up'' distributor Dimension Films would be getting plenty of free bad publicity. One would hope the NAACP might join them in their protest. The American Society of Cinematographers might even want to chime in, since it's a rare film that manages to include so much out-of-focus photography.
Considering that its star-studded soundtrack is featured prominently in the movie's opening credits - and would seem to be the only conceivable reason for the movie's existence - it comes as a surprise to find the music is generally buried under the ineptly improvised repartee of Master P and Johnson. Almost all of it consists of derogatory nicknames for women and plenty of creative usage of that popular 12-letter synonym for family closeness that's sometimes used as a term of endearment by rappers. The lame interaction of the duo makes one wistful for the comic stylings of Dr. Dre and Ed Lover in ``Who's The Man.''
It's a telling sign that a movie is beyond redemption when it can't even keep the attention of kids who've sneaked into the theater hoping for some R-rated fun. Sure enough, after less than an hour of ``Hook-Up,'' a trio of pre-teens in a Wednesday afternoon show at United Artists Westmain began complaining loudly about the film's lackluster content (OK, granted, they didn't exactly phrase it that way) and bolted for the exit. The other half-dozen people in attendance seemed jealous of the youths' initiative.
James Sanford
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