BABY BOY
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Columbia Pictures Director: John Singleton Writer: John Singleton Cast: Tyrese Gibson, Adrienne-Joi Johnson Ving Rhames, Taraji P. Henson, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tamara LaSeon Bass, Omar Gooding
I know quite a few people who despite being college grads and holding decent jobs continue to live with their parents, or live "at home" as the euphemism would have it. Is there any excuse for this? "Well," they say, "In Eastern societies it's not only common to live in extended family relationships; for the young 'uns to move out on their own is positively frowned upon." Or, "We live in a large home: I never see my parents." Maybe, "You know how the economy is...I gotta save my dough and when I live and eat with my folks, I can stash a bundle." Or, "I love my folks. Why should I leave them?" Ah, but we're living in a Western society, there's no such thing as living with your parents but not seeing them, and there's no way that you're going to have the same kind of privacy to live your own life until you take off and get yourself a crib of your own. Did I say crib? According to John Singleton, who wrote and directed "Baby Boy" and a decade ago contributed the dazzling debut of "Boyz N the Hood," a large segment of young black men in America are emotionally (but certainly not physically) immature, referring to their apartments as their cribs, their girls friends as "mama," and their friends as "my boys." While we could argue about whether psychosemantics is bull and words are just words, there's no getting around Singleton's angry new work as at least a film-maker's fictionalized evidence that childish behavior does indeed exist among portions of our country's young black men.
While a mass audience could conceivably be drawn into the theaters playing this honest and energetic film, "Baby Boy" at 129 minutes is lengthy and, given its raw, forthright spirit is more of an arthouse piece that would cater to an audience more concerned with learning more about life than with escaping from genuine human concerns. Save for a disappointing ending in which loose ends are too neatly tied up out of Singleton's apparent desire for closure, "Baby Boy" is so impressive that those of us concerned about ranking movies in order of merit could put this one ahead of "Boyz N Hood"--which starred Laurence Fishburne as a divorced father trying to raise his son with values, to lead him away form the violence in the neighborhood. This time, Singleton is back in the same south-central L.A. neighborhood but it looks like a different place--superficially a clean, neat suburban neighborhood where kids ride their bikes and residents keep up their neat lawns, even pulling up weeds and planting rows of tomatoes, cabbage and collards. While the director had a celebrity cast for "Boyz" to make sure that film would be potent--Fishburne, Ice Cube, Nia Long, Angela Bassett and introducing Cuba Gooding, Jr.--this time he's with some relative unknowns who are in no way less effectual given the lucidity of the text.
The story centers on Jody (Tyrese Gibson), who inhabits virtually every scene, a man who at the age of twenty has already fathered two children by two women, but has held onto his room in the home of his 36-year-old mother Juanita (Adrienne-Joi Johnson). Juanita is not the kind of mom who fills her boy with meat loaf and begs him to stay on at least until he gets married but at her age is still ready for devilish fun and doesn't want her baby boy to hang around. Young Jody is sure he's no longer needed when he sees mama's new man Melvin (Ving Rhames) stark naked in the family kitchen cooking up a storm for Juanita. Though without a job, Jody does have a life of sorts, spending some of his time with his favorite buddy Sweepea (Omar Gooding) and most of his moments with his best gal Yvette (Taraji P. Henson)--who has had an abortion and is increasingly fed up with her man's philandering.
Singleton shows his desire to blame others for Jody's predicament only in a brief statement in the opening narration, in which he put the blame for Jody's aimlessness squarely on Jody but throws in the rejoinder that racism is nonetheless responsible for the young man's limited potential. As Jody goes from his main woman to another, to his best friend for advice and then, reluctantly becomes mentored by his would-be stepdad Melvin, we in the audience cannot help wondering exactly what Singleton means when he asserts that racism is at least partially responsible for Melvin's 10-year jail sentence for crimes committed when, as Melvin puts it, he was "young and dumb," or from Jody's irresponsibility in fathering one boy, sponging off his girl friend and Juanita, and likely suffering from an Oedipal attachment to his mother. Roger Ebert states in his review that "the movie's message to men like its hero is: Yes, racism has contributed to your situation--but do you have to give it so much help with your own attitude?" No way am I saying that racism is not still a destructive force on our society: but where is the evidence in this story? After all the people in the yarn have decent enough jobs-- Yvette working a computer in a nicely-designed office, Melvin putting in a full day as a landscaper--and they live in a suburban part of L.A. that simply cannot be compared to an urban ghetto like Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy.
The acting is first-rate all around, with A.J. Johnson doing a terrific job as an energetic, fun-loving woman who gardens when she is not playing with Melvin and repeatedly tries to coax her baby boy out of the crib, while Tyrese Gibson, who has a following as a singer and music video D.J. executes a bang-up job as a guy not at all eager to find himself, at least not while he has his two favorite women giving him everything he seems to need.
Rated R. Running time: 128 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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