Keenen Ivory Wayans

  • I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)

    I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) I’m not sure that I’m Gonna Git You Sucka is as distinctive today as it was when it came out. Black voices in cinema are significantly more numerous now, and you can now program at least a day’s worth of a blaxploitation spoof film festival. But there’s a semi-pioneering aspect to writer-director-star Keenen Ivory Wayans’s big-screen debut that should be highlighted along the film’s innate qualities. Not that I’m Gonna Git You Sucka is any less silly not knowing the context—although knowing more about Blaxploitation certainly helps, as the film finds roles (big and small) for stars of the earlier era of black-starring thrillers and rarely wastes an occasion to make specific references. It’s generally funny, although there’s some awkwardness to the way the film tries to be absurd and yet sustain a strong narrative—there are plenty of times where twenty-first-century viewers (perhaps trained on more modern takes on similar material) will wonder when the next joke is coming. To be fair, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka does find a surer footing in its later half as the gags become more visual, more self-assured and more focused. It even weaves in some stinging social commentary without overdoing it in the way that more modern takes have often done, so there’s plenty to dig into beyond just jokes. There’s a surprisingly good cast here, including Chris Rock’s debut in a small but showy role. The spoof comedy subgenre has certainly seen far worse—indeed, tracking the Wayan’s downward trajectory in matters of crudeness, it’s regrettable that the family didn’t follow in the tradition of I’m Gonna Git You Sucka rather than end up with White Chicks and digging downward.

  • Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

    Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) There are a few movies out there that are best reviewed after reading about their production. A first uninformed look at Hollywood Shuffle is invariably going to come across as being too harsh on the material. This can be explained by the film’s extremely low-budget, writer-director Robert Townsend’s overriding satirical intentions, and sheer underdog nature of the project (which was financed through credit cards and acting gigs, and took two years to complete in guerilla-style filmmaking conditions). It’s clearly didactic in how it really wants you to understand the problems that faced black actors in 1980s Hollywood, and unapologetic in the ways it gets in your face about it. The result is unequal. With Keenen Ivory Wayans writing part of the script, the humour is very uneven, ranging from classic sequences (such as the one where he imagines a hostile press berating him for not being black enough, or the fantasy movie-review sketch) to more humdrum material. It’s also (especially in hindsight) imperfect in how it tackles inequality—loudly advocating for fewer black stereotypes while indulging in other kinds of stereotyping. I do have a sneaking suspicion that the film is funnier if you know all about life in 1980s Hollywood for black actors: that it’s an inside joke that happened to have wider appeal. Still, in the evolution of black cinema through the decades, there’s clearly a place for Hollywood Shuffle as an eloquent capture of a specific time and place—not that things are necessarily perfect now, but that by the 1980s you could see black cinema go from the superstars à la Eddie Murphy (explicitly referred to here) to a more accessible brand of black cinema. Consider that Spike Lee had just come out with She’s Gotta Have It in 1986…

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, July 2022) A second viewing of Hollywood Shuffle, better-informed about the state of Black Hollywood cinema in the mid-1980s, reinforces my gnawing suspicion that the film was much funnier if you were then paying attention to how Hollywood was presenting black actors at the time. I’m not completely saying that it’s inside-baseball … but it is quite inside-baseball. Part of writer-director Robert Townsend’s success in completing this showbiz satire (often bending rules and maxing out his financing to do so) is that the world eventually caught up to his criticism: Black representation in Hollywood has considerably improved since Hollywood Shuffle, and the obstacles he describes are slowly, thankfully fading away. As a time capsule, his film remains quite effective: the portrait of a struggling actor fighting to have more than low-life roles or Eddie Murphy imitations is scattershot but considerably enlivened by sketch comedy moments that make the comedy far more overt. I like it quite a bit, even if I feel as if I’m not the right person at the right time to get the laughs. I’m sympathetic to the cause but ultimately an outsider, and Hollywood Shuffle is very much an insider’s sarcastic laugh at an industry that’s fading away.