THE GREAT WHITE HYPE
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
(Fox)
Directed by Reginald Hudlin
Written by Tony Hendra and Ron Shelton
Cast Samuel L. Jackson, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans, Peter
Berg, Jon Lovitz, Corbin Bernsen, Cheech Marin, John
Rhys-Davies
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for language and sports violence)
Running Time 85 minutes
Reviewed at The Wynnsong 10, Durham, NC (3MAY96)
==
A big, busy boxing satire with a surprisingly paltry punch, THE GREAT WHITE HYPE stars Samuel L. Jackson as a shameless boxing promoter whose plan to boost sagging pay-per-view revenues is to "invent" a white contender (Peter Berg) to challenge his black heavyweight "champ" (Damon Wayans). (The logic is that people will pay more to see black vs. white than black vs. black.) He may be right, in an absurdly accurate way, but the film doesn't give us a reason to care. As a scathing sports spoof, HYPE is just that: unfunny, unfocused, and, at times, just plain pointless. As a commentary on race relations, it's even *less* effective.
The dialogue is the best of this mess, lines like Jon Lovitz exclaiming "I cannot make caviar out of fish eggs!" Writers Tony Hendra and Ron Shelton also do good on the street slang, though we never hear enough of it. The script isn't strong enough, though, to support the aggressive camera work of director Reginald Hudlin (HOUSE PARTY). He comes across as absolute overkill. THE GREAT WHITE HYPE *almost* turns around at the end, at the Big Match, when Hudlin attempts an extended gag of rock-concert proportions. With costumed dwarfs, gangsta rappers, and the "champ" dressed as Death, only then do we get a glimpse of the spoof that should've been.
Grade: C-
--
Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC
legeros@nando.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
Visit me in MOVIE HELL
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