Roast
Beef
Save
for some decent darkly-urban cinematography by Hubert Taczanowski
and a brief appearance by singer Faith Evans, Turn
It Up is a bit of a stiff. Its hackneyed story concerns an
aspiring hiphop artist whose attempts to cut a record and get out
the hood are blocked by white thugs and his best friend's mistakes.
You know, it's the kind of movie that gets you thinking about your
grocery list or what you're missing on TV while you're watching it.
In
this case, my mind wandered to the trailers that preceded the film,
what they might be saying about how someone imagined Turn
It Up would play, and to whom. First comes Billy Elliot,
a movie about a little English boy who wants to dance ballet instead
of box, much to the horror of his working class father. Number two, The
Legend of Bagger Vance, wherein Will Smith is a magical caddie
who teaches Matt Damon to play golf and win the white girl's
heart. Next, Ladies' Man, where Saturday Night Live's
long-suffering Tim Meadows gets a chance at last to stretch his very
own three-minute skit into an hour and a half. And finally, Bamboozled,
Spike Lee's high profile return to fiction-filmmaking, a comedic
critique of television's ongoing minstrel show, starring Damon
Wayans, Savion Glover, and Jada Pinkett-Smith.
Imagine these trailers form a prism through which to make sense of the movie they precede. So, for instance, you might observe that, like the heartwarming English film, Turn It Up is a "universal" story about growing up, in which a young man (not precisely a boy, but often immature) fights social and economic odds to pursue his rap-star dream. Brooklyn-born Diamond (third Fugee Pras, best known for "Ghetto Superstar," which hit-singled off the Bulworth soundtrack) is midway through cutting a record, which, the movie wants you to think, is off the proverbial hook. With an ailing mother and absent dad (this would be the other Billy Elliot connection, father-issues), D has a few clichéd chips on his shoulders, while seeking respect from his thuggish homeboys, as well as thuggish record industry suits (one label exec is called, ominously, Mr. White). Sadly, and no matter how you may judge his rhymes, D's not very imaginative when it comes to expressing himself. Too often, he's reduced to fending off the bad guys by saying, "Don't fuck with my music!"
Of course, some folks do just that. The first is D's no-count daddy Cliff (Vondie Curtis-Hall), who shows up for D's mother's funeral (the word "contrived" doesn't begin to cover this plotting, and much of it is ripped off from Purple Rain, to boot). Cliff is a jazz pianist who left the wife and shorty in order to pursue his gigging dreams, then lapsed into alcoholism or whatever. His return ("I'm sorry I messed up") coincides with D's creative crisis, and luckily, dad's versed in slick studio production, such that his insta-input improves the kid's record exponentially, or at least makes it sound more all right than the flat rhymes he'd been running just a few minutes before (his crackhead engineer --Chris Messina-- is definitely not feeling it). Soon enough, father and son are in the sound booth, nodding to the new-better beats, happy as hiphopping clams.
All this studio time doesn't come free (even if the owner does believe, as he tells D, "You've got the goods"). And so, D's magic instigator and helper -- his sorta Bagger Vance -- is his longtime friend/financier/manager Gage (the energetic Ja Rule), who also happens to be a drug-runner for some slimy white British fellow named Mr. B (Jason Statham). Though Mr. B tries to entice D to work for him, the kid's not having it (something about scruples). Still, he's willing to go on runs with his friend. Gage is really a good kid ("Do you really believe I enjoy pushin' weight?") and takes dutiful note of D's hypocrisy, in that he takes Gage's money to pay for his crib and studio time. But the guys are more bad than good for one another, their dog loyalty eventually making both of them vulnerable to Mr. B's excesses. One example will suffice: Mr. B learns that Gage has stolen money from another dealer, which in some long run belongs to Mr. B., and so he tortures him in the most retarded way, straight out of Movie Villainy 101: he asks Gage if he wants some "roast beef," hauls out a meat slicer he has handy, then holds Gage's face against it -- shiny slicer-wheel a-whirring -- until the kid gives up the required information. This takes about half a second.
As
indicated by this scene, Gage primarily serves as a foil to D. Where
the eminently intimidate-able Gage is excitable and flashy, D is
seething and earnest. But, the charismatic Ja Rule turns Gage into
more than the usual sidekick: he's more resolute, funny, and
energetic, and if not precisely Will-Smithlike, he's actually more
appealing than Pras, who runs low on the affect scale. For instance,
at the necessary moment when D performs at a local club, all dressed
up in a slick white suit, his boy Gage steps up for one verse and
basically blows him off the stage. But D reasserts himself when,
during a shootout with a group of "Asians," he's suddenly
revealed as the two-guns equal of Chow Yun Fat (this ludicrous
expertise is never explained). They have each other's backs, I
suppose, but D's supposed sway is not very convincing.
In
an apparent effort to bolster his role as hero, the movie makes D,
like Tim Meadows, a "Ladies Man" who goes straight. Sort
of. While it's clear that, if he wanted, D could outperform Gage as
a player (Gage has scantily-outfitted women hanging round him at the
clubs), he has a steady girl, Kia (Tamala Jones), who will
eventually convince her man that he needs to set his priorities. She
does this in two ways: at first, she disses him: "When I first
met you," she says when he's late for a date, "you were so
fine, you were mad cool." But now he's not living up to
whatever potential she saw in him and, more specifically, is
spending too much time with his boy Gage, "running around like
Batman and Robin" (a description that suggests she may know
something about their relationship that even they don't know). And
later, after a sufficient number of professional mini-crises have
beset D, she informs him that she's pregnant, and insists that he
make a choice, be a man, do the right thing, and (insert your
favorite cliché here).
Review by Cynthia Fuchs · Nitrate Online
