the new averagebro blog

Halle Berry is America’s sweetheart. She’s won an Oscar. She’s made lots of money. She’s finally found love and had a child. She’s been universally upheld as a standard bearer of beauty, ethnic or otherwise.

And she’s done all this, in spite of having made some truly sh*tty movies.

No movie better illustrates the hit-or-miss nature of her career than 1997′s B.A.P.S., a movie I actually did pay to see. It’s a decision I regret to this day. Those were 30 precious dollars and 91 minutes I’ll never, evar get back.

B.A.P.S. (short for Black American Princesses) starred Berry as a hardly believable stereotypical ghetto girl named Starkeyshia Nisi. Nisi and her cousin Mickey have dreams of getting rich and opening their own ghetto hair salon, but to make money, they take jobs as a caretakers for an elderly Beverly Hills playboy.

Much like the Fat Boys’ 1987 star vehicle Disorderlies, B.A.P.S. is a fish out of water with a blind ulterior motive story. In Disorderlies, The Fat Boys were a bungling trio of aspiring rappers hired to provide medical care for an aging millionaire, whose nephew secretly wants the orderlies to kill the old man so he can inherit his fortune. Despite the silly premise, Disorderlies was actually a pretty funny movie.

B.A.P.S. on the other hand? Uhh, not so much. Seriously, watch the trailer and wince.

And just in case you wanna subject yourself to more torture, here’s a classic scene.

Since the only real “names” in this movie were Halle and Martin Landau, you could argue that this one doesn’t really qualify was a WBMHTGC candidate, and you’d prolly be right. But I wasn’t gonna waste any valuable bandwidth on Bulworth, so sorry.

This was definitely one of those special “man, even the opening credits suck, can I still get my money back?” types of godawful flicks that only comes around once every 3-4 months. Pooty Tang, Celtic Pride, and anything starring Bokeem Woodbine would also qualify.

It all sorta kinda makes you wonder why many consider Berry a great actress in the first place. Sure, she was good in Boomerang, Queen, and Losing Isaiah. But what about The Flintstones? Catwoman? Gothika? The Rich Man’s Wife? Arghhh.

I’m not saying she’s overrated, but she’s got a little bit of T-Mac goin’ on there.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Question: Is Halle Berry a bit overrated? What’s your favorite Halle flick, assuming such a thing exists? Do you think she deserved that Oscar for Monster’s Ball?

B.A.P.S. on Yahoo! Movies

More of When Bad Movies Happen To Good Casts [AB.com]

I didn’t know much about Frankie Lymon, but when the ads started running for 1998′s Why Do Fools Fall In Love?, I knew I’d be one of the first in line to peep this flick. And why wouldn’t I? After all, this movie was all about the ladies, as the amazing trio of Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox, and Lela Rochon were cast as Lymon’s marital concubine.

When this movie dropped, Larenz Tate was at the height of his post-Love Jones popularity. I never really understood why women were so gaga over a 5-foot-4 midget they wouldn’t give the time of day on the street, but hey, I don’t have a uterus. Besides, there’s lots of other far more profound stuff I also don’t understand about black women. O-Dawg is the least of my concerns.

Halle Berry hadn’t quite turned into a Hollywood phenom yet. Coming off a star turn in the blockbuster Independence Day (as a stripper, mind you) Fox was nearing her cinematic and physical prime. Rochon couldn’t deliver a line if she drove a Verizon truck, and wasn’t ever gonna be anything more than Sunshine from Harlem Nights, but they coulda made far worse choices for the third wheel.

But despite having all that going for them, this movie just plain blew chunks. It was one of the rare movies that stunk from the opening credits. I remember watching the opening montage and thinking “Whoa, I just blew $6.50[1] on this?”.

The movie is so unremarkable and unmemorable, I can’t really recall anything notable about it. Ray it clearly wasn’t. Maybe this had something to do with Lymon’s relative lack of popularity. Eff’ Gregory Abbott, Lymon is a real one-hit-wonder. I mean, seriously, will anyone wanna watch Off On Your Own Girl: The Al B Sure Story 40 years from now? I seriously think not.

The film’s entire premise wasn’t Lymon’s musical legacy, rather his serial womanizing and drug habits. But that in and of itself isn’t enough to make people care. So all that’s left is an overdone performance by Tate, a complete mail-in job by Berry, and the pretty faces, yet woefully inadequate talents of Fox and Rochon. It’s no wonder this clunker crashed and burned.

What is amazing is just how this one bad movie (it barely grossed $12M) completely ethered the careers of everyone involved, except for Berry. Tate went from leading man to greasy-talkin’ action-movie sidekick (Crash, A Man Apart, Biker Boyz) almost instantaneously. And that’s a shame, cause dude really did have some chops, as seen in movies like Dead Presidents, Menace 2 Society and tv’s South Central. I bet he looks at contemporaries like Terrence Howard with the same “that used to be me” wistfulness that Aaron Hall feels when he watches “Trapped In The Closet”.[2] It’s a shame really.

Fox was never incredibly talented in the first place, and her career took a sharp turn for the worse as well. She’s since gone on to be more known for her brief dalliance with 50 Cent, and a startling series of awful plastic surgeries than perhaps anything she’s done career-wise. Rochon got married, got pregnant, and got ghost. I haven’t seen her on anything since. Where’s the milk carton when you really need it?

In spite of this massive cluster, Berry went on to become a household name, forever immortalized by her Oscar winning performance in the equally dreadful Monster’s Ball[3]. But to be 100% serious, she hasn’t made a movie with any of the emotional depth of her early performances in flicks like Losing Isaiah and Jungle Fever. She’s cashed in, but you still sorta feel like she never quite lived up to her full potential, Tracy McGrady-style.

Why Do Fools showed, perhaps better than any movie this side of Kingdom Come, that it takes a lot more to make a good black movie than some relatively well-known names on the marquee.

Question: Did you see Why Do Fools Fall In Love? What did you think? You got any future nominees for this feature?

Frankie Lymon [Wiki]

Why Do Fools Fall In Love? [Wiki]

More of When Bad Movies Happen To Good Casts [AB.com]

[1] Ahhh, $6 movies. Those were the days.

[3] Coming soon. Just gimme some time.

[Editor's Note: If it seems like I'm straight jackin' my girl Thembi's steez, it's cause I am. And on that note, I present the first in a who-knows-how-often series called When Bad Movies Happen To Good Casts. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Enjoy.]

So, I’m flippin’ channels the other night, and guess what movie’s on TNT for the 193,239th time?

That’s right, Anaconda.

For those without basic cable, this 1998 movie is about a documentary crew that travels down the Amazon searching for a long-lost Indian tribe, only to wind up in deep snake crap when they take in a stranded hunter who eventually hijacks the boat and leads them on a wild goose chase for a record-breaking 40-foot green anaconda.

Here’s the trailer.

This movie, with the exception of the scene where Ice Cube got squeezed out by the snake was pretty lousy. The CGI effects were mad cheesy, the plot was predictable, it wasn’t even intentionally campy. It pretty much just sucked.

But one thing I caught on my 182th involuntary viewing of this movie was just how loaded the cast was. You had pre-J-Lo Jennifer Lopez doing her usual combo of poorly recited lines and gratuitous butt shots. Ice Cube played a tough talking, yet bumbling ex-con photographer, but all I could see was Doughboy Goes To The Rainforest. You also had the serially underrated John Voight as the greedy villain, Luke Wilson in his now-typical slacker role, Eric Stoltz as J-Lo’s token white boyfriend, and even Skinemax All-Star Kari Wuhrer as token bimbette.

I’m not sayin’ all these folks are great actors, but when Owen Wilson is you’re 5th stringer, it’s fair the say the movie shouldn’t suck as royally as it did.

For such an amazingly sucky movie, this film incredibly spawned a non-straight-to-DVD sequel, the equally lecherous Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. By the time the second installment rolled around in 2004, Lopez was at the height of her superstardom, Ice Cube had graduated to kiddie flicks, and Wilson was finally bigger than his brother. It goes without saying that all the aforementioned had better things to do than appear in this flop, which had arguably better CGI effects, but could do no better than chitlin’ circuit leads like Salli Richardson and Morris Chesnut.

Just when you thought it was safe to head back to Blockbuster, there’s some news. The Anacondas saga continues with not one, but two more straight-to-DVD installments in 2008 and 09′, starring none other than David Hasselhoff.

I’m already loading up my Netflix queue.

Question: Did you think Anaconda blew chunks as much as I did, or was it borderline campy genius? Do you have any future nominees for When Bad Movies Happen To Good Casts?

Anaconda [Wiki]