Erica Peeples

  • True to the Game 2 (2020)

    True to the Game 2 (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2021) Considering my low opinion of the first True to the Game, I really wasn’t expecting much from the follow-up. To my surprise, it’s actually better than the original—not by much, and not enough to rate as a good film, but at least it’s not filled with annoyances as the first was. While the first was an unwieldy adaptation of a self-published novel, this one seems to be a purely cinematic expansion, picking up a short time after the events of the first film. Our protagonist (Erica Peeples, not bad) has become a NYC journalist, grown a more flattering hairstyle, and polished many of the most irritating edges of her personality. When she gets an offer to profile a rich businessman in Los Angeles, she drives there (what?!?), is romanced by two men (one of them white, the other black—and surprisingly enough for a BET-broadcast production, it’s the white guy who’s the good one) and gets a largely useless revelation from her interviewee. Meanwhile, shenanigans back in Philadelphia put the rest of her family once again in danger in what is largely a separate subplot. Finally, there’s a dangerous man who sets out to take revenge (or at least money) from the protagonist by seducing her before his inevitable betrayal. Those are big broad strokes of plot and they’re not even gracefully integrated together. Characters make decisions that only work because they lead to the next plot point (and sometimes not even that, such as the inexplicable decision to drive from NYC to L.A. rather than take a plane), there are nick-of-time coincidences and the film ends before resolving its own plot, obviously announcing the eventual arrival of True to the Game 3. Still, I did not dislike the brute-force entertainment of the results (macho gangsterism, cheap thrills, naked girls and all) and certainly liked it better than the clumsy original.

  • True to the Game (2017)

    True to the Game (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2021) Eh, what a mess. There’s something very familiar to much of True to the Game, as a young woman falls for a bad-boy drug dealer and gets caught in the crossfire when gang wars turn hot. But it’s in the way it’s put together than the film loses points. Erica Peeples is not a particularly likable pick in the lead, and her annoying, materialistic self-entitled character (who’s supposed to be super-smart—go figure) does no one any favour. You can literally point at any other actress in the film (even veteran Starletta DuPois!) and say, “I’d like her better as the lead.”  Columbus Short is slightly better as the drug lord (supposedly trying to go straight, which lasts maybe five minutes), but he’s ill-served by the demands of the script. Speaking of script, well: people get gunned down on a regular, almost predictable schedule, and the women sitting next to their targeted boyfriends don’t fare any better. I remain puzzled by the film’s message, because in between the usual “if you run with gangsters, you’ll get shot” theme, it seems curiously comfortable with the protagonist living off what she knows is blood money. I know, I know: fantasy wish-fulfillment, etc., but it’s still dumb. The direction is indifferent, the photography is flat, and there’s scarcely any reason to keep watching the film as it gets dumber and more amoral. (By the time the lead character is arguing with an executor about a house that belongs to someone else, we’re firmly in the “self-absorbed brat, please” camp.)  It’s just a clumsy film without much of an idea where it’s going, or how to get there. Learning that True to the Game is based on a self-published novel explains quite a lot, except why many people thought that this was just fine as a movie. (Even worse: it has spawned two sequels, which I’ll eventually see because I can’t help myself.)