Vivica A. Fox

  • Illicit (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2022) Please forgive me if I get some of Illicit’s details wrong – I’m writing this review only a few days after seeing the film, but already it’s blurring into an indistinct morass of very, very similar black-cast infidelity dramas also broadcast on BET. Let me check the plot summary for details – oh yes: a parole officer and a model-turned-housewife are a few years into their marriage, so both decide on their own to start an affair. The hallmarks of a BET infidelity drama are all there, except for the slightly different ending: attractive cast (which is more than half my justification for watching — Michele Weaver looks fantastic in curls and glasses), lingerie scenes, appearances by patron saints of straight-to-BET movies Vivica A. Fox and Essence Atkins, and plotting so wonky that I’m not sure the filmmakers were working with adult supervision. Aside from attractive actresses, what keeps me coming back to BET films is the delicious sense that their movies are not slick or particularly competent: their storytelling mistakes are so confoundingly inept that they feel like fresh air in a world of overengineered filmmaking. In Illicit’s case, for instance, it means setting up the two adulterous relationships, then slowly cranking up the pressure on both partners until they’re blackmailed, revealing the connections between the various characters, getting all of them in the same place and threatening to blow all the secrets wide open… then walking away from the whole potential climax. Both husbands and wife end their affairs. No serious consequences. Never mind the blackmail that seemed so urgent ten minutes earlier. Roll credits. Who ever thought this was a good finale, ready to air? Even the most twisted “subvert all expectations” fan would find this unacceptable. In the end, films like Illicit have this bizarre blend of crowd-pleasing titillation (yet with nothing more explicit than lingerie), conservative morality (affairs are bad!), stupid characters (you would think parole officers would know not to mess with parolees), straight-ahead basic filmmaking (don’t go looking for directorial style from writer-director Corey Grant!), low-budget expediency and yet an embarrassing amount of rookie mistakes that stop the entire thing from being enjoyable as more than a catalogue of things not to do. I still liked Illicit, maybe in part because of its faults, but would it be too much to ask for a conventionally good film of that ilk once in a while?

  • Booty Call (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2022) As its title suggests, there’s nothing particularly subtle about Booty Call, but it has some discipline in presenting the misadventures of two men and two women as they hook up for the night… or rather have trouble trying to. Jamie Foxx and Tommy Davidson carry most of the comedic load as two best friends wooing their dates and then having to venture out in order to purchase condoms so that the rest of the night can go forward—their simple plans are complicated by being too ambitious, running into an armed robbery, or having to walk a dog. Meanwhile, Vivica A. Fox and Tamala Jones also seem to have fun playing their dates—another pair of friends with strong personalities. (Fox is funnier, but Jones does have a splendid lingerie scene.)  Booty Call impressively manages to keep its action tied to a very short timespan, roughly beginning when the sun goes down and ending as it comes up. The third act ventures a bit farther afield both in location and in comic methods, but the script manages to fit its episodes within a solid framework with recurring gags. Production values are decent, and the script generally knows how to be naughty without being vulgar, which is something that’s not necessarily obvious in less-skilled hands. It all combines into an amusing sex comedy that is sometimes even insightful about gender roles and expectations. Catch it if you’ve missed it.

  • Rev (2020)

    Rev (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) The sole distinction earned by Rev is being a GTA-set GTA. Or, to unpack this a bit, of being a Grand Theft Auto game set in the Greater Toronto Area. Unfortunately, Rev also has to contend with being an amoral low-budget film, both of which severely limit its effectiveness. Stuck without an action sequence budget, Rev muddles through a story that doesn’t include a single expansive action scene: don’t expect car chases or shootouts, because this is a film that exemplifies “look, but do not touch the expensive rented cars that we can’t afford to trash.”  The other problem is a lack of morals—Scorsese-style, the film is heavily narrated by its protagonist, a young man turning to crime because a steady job is too boring and he doesn’t have the basic skills required for customer service or managing his boss. His sole claim to being a hero has to do with being forced to work with the police, but he (in the tradition of such films—I don’t writer-director Ant Horasanli has a single original idea for Rev beside setting it in Toronto) eventually reneges on that. There’s a useful comparison here to be made with the Fast and Furious series that Rev is so intent on imitating—the Fast and Furious characters may not be law-abiding, but they have strong personal morals and likable traits that are completely absent here. Our protagonist loves making money, stealing his boss’s girlfriend (which goes over more smoothly than you’d expect in the end) and not working for The Man—making him of dubious likability if you’re not a part of the same sociopathic set. Low budget action plus rock-bottom morals make Rev easy to dismiss as nothing more than a wannabe close of much better films. It didn’t have to be like that—from a visual perspective, Rev stretches its budget as far as it can go with some really good cinematography, adequate acting (I won’t argue with Vivica A. Fox and Hannah Gordon) and dialogue that, from time to time, can be amusing. But it’s all in the service of something intensely predictable and completely meaningless, trivializing crime with a fairytale distinction between bad criminals and “good” criminals engaged in the proverbial “cool crime of car thievery.”  Rev is the kind of film that went wrong at the scripting stage, chasing an audience without understanding that it’s got to be about more than making money and running off on the beach.