Movie Review: Hustle and Flow

So I went to see Hustle and Flow last night, alone, because my friends, (the black ones mind you) deemed it too ghetto and I was on my own with this one. Its so funny because if the love of my life, Terrence Howard, was not in this, I would have been the first person screaming out how they are not watching that ghetto shit. I had heard that this movie is the first movie to get offered a distribution deal at Sundance, the whitest film festival on earth, and I had heard really good buzz on Terrence Howard's performance. One of the very few actors, this club including Johnny Depp, that is such a good actor, that he is good in a shitty movie. Needless to say, I believed and I ventured to the theatre by myself. Thank God, the movie was great.

The way the movie is marketed, it is seen as another "black people making their way coming out the ghetto" film, and it is, but they should have tailored their strategy a little to make it a little more targeted to everyone, like persay monster's ball (which by the way is a far less superior film, to say the least). This movie showed me exactly what's wrong with other ghetto black films. First of all, its authentic. It takes place in Memphis, and its actually filmed in Memphis. I'm tired seeing stuff supposedly filed in New York, LA, and Chicago, but yet you see hardly any people walking around and there is that needle looking building in the background that I always see that tips off that its filmed in Vancouver somewhere. Secondly, the acting is great. They actors actually sound like they live in Memphis, not some forced accent that they made up as they occasionally slip back into their bad diction (i.e. J-lo in Angel Eyes). Lastly, and most importantly the characters are not dumb. Even the characters that are supposed to be dumb are not dumb. Their not rocket scientists either, they're human. The way that real people would act in that situation. Add in a good plot, good writing, and of course, my baby daddy Terrence, you got probably the best movie I have seen this year.

Now I must comment, on the actual movie watching experience. Like I said before, its a black movie, so the actual audience is just as eventful as the movie itself.

1. I went to see this movie at 9:40 on a Sunday, and there were still a assload of kids. not teenagers mind you, kids. A woman was sitting behind me with a girl and a boy who probably had a combined age of 5. The girl was sick because the woman kept asking her did she need to throw up and kept getting up to take her to the bathroom. The little boy kept repeating everything he saw on the screen, not every line, just the punchlines with the cussing in it.

2. Like I said, it was 9:40 and there were people still arriving in at 10:30.

3. When parts of the movie didn't have that much dialogue took place, it became so loud in the theatre it sounded like a concert waiting to begin.

4. Also, when the characters were silent, there were random moments when the audience would comment what the characters were thinking. For example, there is a part where the lead character is trying to get one of his girls to sing louder, and a boy shouts "sing the song, the way I told you to sing it, anna mae".


5. Its not as horrible as I'm describing. Hell, I could have went on a Friday night.