R.I.O.T. THE MOVIE
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
*
Outside the Christian community, people will just look back at you blankly when you ask if they've heard of Carman. Then, when you try to explain the man's succees in the contemporary Christian music industry, they find it even more unbelievable. Believe me, even those of us who have been buying his CD's since the mid-80's can't defend the man because, since about 1989, he's tried to bend over backwards to gain acceptance in youth circles despite being well over forty and catching onto every musical trend several years late.
In 1989 he did a little ditty called "The Resurrection Rap" that sounded like the worst early 80's pop rap and had lyrics like "I got the deffest, freshest tale to tell / About how Christ saved my soul from hell" and "When Christ talks, you best be chill / He made the wind and the waves stand still." In 1993 he jumped on the Vanilla Ice / M.C. Hammer hip-hop bandwagon with a song called "Who's in the House?" ("JC!") And on the new R.I.O.T. album, the companion piece to this movie, he's adopting an early 90's Technotronic / 2 Unlimited / "Rhythm is a Dancer" sound.
That's just one reason none of us who were raised on Carman can think the man has any degree of coolness, but he's also a beefy Italian who talks like Stallone and tries to be the Renaissance Man of Christian music. Besides the albums, there are books, music videos, even a video talk show that Carman does once a month called "Time 2."
The R.I.O.T. movie starts out with a preview for the "Time 2" video series. At the end, Carman comes on and says to the camera, "Become a 'Time 2' Video Club member and we'll have a pretty good time together..." then he goes into an expression of deep, contemplative thought and shakes his head, amending his statement. "Aw, who am I kidding? We'll have a straight-up blast!" It's hilarious because the man obviously thinks his videos are the most entertaining things on the planet. I was waiting for him to add, after the "straight-up blast" line, "You'll laugh so hard you'll soil the couch! You're gonna sh*t your pants! Your death certificate will read 'Overdose of Laughter'!"
Then comes the R.I.O.T. movie itself, which you can find for rent at any fine Christian bookstore. Carman plays tough- as-nails cop Vic Rizzo (no, seriously), who decides to move from Chicago to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma after his kid, Little Vic (no, seriously), goes into the school bathroom and has a run-in with some gang members. Luckily, his beautiful teacher comes to the rescue just in time ("Gee, he's been in the bathroom for fifteen seconds already -- something must be wrong!") and the gang members split.
Cut to the next scene, where Carman gives his son and the teacher a lecture about how some kids aren't actually in gangs but dress to emulate gang members. "We call them 'bustas' or 'wannabes'," Carman says with a straight face, little realizing he, as an old man futilely trying to keep up with youth culture, is the biggest wannabe of them all.
The head gang member is played by Christian rapper T-Bone (the name "Ribeye" was taken), whose only hit song so far features the lyrics, "I'm the lyrical assassin / My lyrics go bup- bup-bup / And all the demons get struck." There's a scene toward the beginning where T-Bone is running from Carman Rizzo and he reaches a locked door and begins banging on it. If the screen writer had only thought to have T-Bone yell out, "Bup-bup-open up!" the movie as a whole would have been worth watching.
But the attempts at humor aren't quite on the "bup- bup-open-up" level. Take, for example, the scene in which Carman bursts in on a bunch of gang members terrorizing a diner and sees one standing atop the counter. He says, "Get your feet off the counter!" and breaks the guy's balance with his nightstick. Funny, yes, but for all the wrong reasons, as with all the violent scenes in R.I.O.T. Carman gets in two hilarious one-on-one fights with the gang members, not to mention the pathetic karate scenes where he takes a dozen or more of them out at once with his intermediate-to- advanced manuevers that are unconvincing enough to make you realize Carman had too much creative control over the movie.
As far as the plot goes, Carman soon finds that there are even gang problems in Broken Arrow and has to face down his own fears while inevitably romancing the beautiful elementary school teacher. Twice his children are unbelievably placed in jeopardy, once when Little Vic is inexplicably at school in the middle of the night and another where his prepubescent daughter is assaulted while working at the diner. The girl can't be more than eleven years old and we know child labor laws don't allow that kind of work, but her presence there is never explained, unless it's she's working in the Kathie Lee Sweatstaraunt.
And every ten minutes or so, completely unrelated to the plot, a music video from the R.I.O.T. album pops up. The videos are on an equally pathetic level with the movie itself, ranging from the Janet Jackson / Paula Abdul ripoff title track ("We are a part of the Jesus nation") to the Billy Ray Carman line-dance song "Step of Faith" and THRILLER ripoff "No Monsters." There's even a nine- minute epic called "There is a God," where Carman points out all the intricacies of the earth and universe in a song that steals the chords from "We Are the World." Interesting how God could create the world in seven days but Carman couldn't create a new chord progression.
As a whole, R.I.O.T. The Movie is nothing you should hunt down unless you're already familiar with the man (the CARman, that is). And if you like movies that are bad enough to laugh at, this one defies all belief. It makes it all the more masochistically enjoyable knowing that Carman really thought he was making a good movie with entertaining doses of comedy, drama and action. But believe me, and believe I'm riot, this movie is none of the above. If there was a "Jesus Christ Theater 3000" showcase for bad Christian movies, R.I.O.T. would be the main attraction.
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