#46 Crossover (2006) (Colin)

Cast: Anthony Mackie, Wesley Jonathan, Eva Marcille, Wayne Brady, Little JJ

Director: Preston A. Whitemore II

Genre: Action, Sport

The next movie in our list is all about basketball, a sport I have to admit I find rather dull.  To me, basketball plays out like this: bounce bounce bounce 2 points, bounce bounce bounce 2 points, bounce bounce bounce 3 points, (big cheer), bounce bounce bounce 2 points, bounce bounce foul!, bounce bounce bounce 1 point, bounce bounce bounce and so on and so on.

I am being naïve and there is probably a lot more bouncing that I realise.

I’ve never really given basketball a chance so what better way to try to whet my appetite than a movie based around the sport.  Teen Wolf did not manage it, nor did Space Jam although to be fair I was asleep through most of it, (as was the rest of the cinema).  Was Crossover the movie to finally change my view?

The first thing we learn early on in the movie, is that Crossover is not about basketball, (or as I first thought, the paranormal), but a more flamboyant version played in the ‘street’ called ‘streetball’, (wow, that must have taken a while to name!).  Sure there’s lots of bounce bounce bounce, but skills and being a bit of a show off are also encouraged.  The first to 21 points wins and the organiser of the matches, a shady ex-sports agent called Vaughn, (Wayne Brady), pockets a shed load of money from dodgy betting scams based around the game.

The movie is essentially 2 stories which co-exist throughout.  Firstly there is the story of Tech, (Anthony Mackie), who is a talented streetball player desperate to get out of the Detroit slums.  He makes money by hustling players on the street basketball courts and teams up with another talented streetball player called Up, (Lil’ JJ), (which is an odd name for a kid and I can only think his parents were massive Sonic the Hedgehog fans and that Up was named after the cheat you entered: Up C, Down C, Left C, Right C, ABC+Start).

His story is to exact revenge on rival Jewelz, (Philip Champion), an arrogant streetball player whose team are currently champions and undefeated.  Tech’s team narrowly loses to them at the beginning of the movie which leads Jewelz to taunt and belittle Tech.  What better way to get revenge than by betting Vaughn with his hustled streetball money, that he can thrash Jewelz team and end their undefeated run, (Clingfilm on the toilet? Laxatives in his drink? Swapping his vitamin tablets for Viagra?).

The other story revolves around Tech’s friend, Noah Cruise, (Wesley Jonathan), who is a standalone star in Tech’s team and a natural talent.  He wins a scholarship to UCLA, however, instead of using this on basketball and becoming pro, Cruise wishes to use the scholarship to study and pursue a career in medicine.  His mind is 50/50 until he accidentally makes short time girlfriend and 1 night stand, Vanessa, (Eva Pigford), pregnant and decides he should do the right thing, marry her and go for the safe medicine career option.

Vaughn, spotting Cruise’s talent and dollar signs, desperately tries to persuade Cruise to abandon the sensible career path.  He offers to become Cruise’s agent and to use his contacts to get Cruise into the NBA.  When Cruise constantly pushes back, Vaughn realises he may have to resort to desperate tactics.

Will Tech’s team pull off the upset and get their revenge over Jewelz?  Can Vaughn change Cruise’s mind?  And will I be able to complete level 208 in Candy Crush Saga, the game I’m playing whilst this movie bores me to tears?

The answer to the last question, I’m pleased to say, is yes, (but I had to use a lollipop hammer).

Crossover starts off with the promise of fast paced action.  Director Preston A. Whitemore II seems to be influenced by Guy Ritchie and the opening titles remind me of Ritchie’s direction in Lock Stock or Snatch and is full of snappy short scenes cut with cool cars and fancy basketball skills to the soundtrack of thumping hip hop.  All looks and sounds good until the titles end and the pace slows down to a crawl.  Crossover goes from Lock Stock Ritchie to Swept Away Ritchie in the blink of an eye, (see blog here).

Apart from a little montage half way through when Tech and Up are hustling other streetball players, the movie is very pedestrian.  This is not helped by the continual interruption of Up with Basketball trivia questions to Tech.  I assume this is for the real Basketball fans and is meant to test their knowledge, but to people like me who are unfamiliar with the sport, this serves as nothing more than an unwanted pause in the movie.

Maybe next time they could make it more exciting by having a jazzy jingle to accompany the quiz, maybe a glamorous assistant to show Tech what he could win and the promise of being ripped apart by a hungry honey badger if he gets the answer wrong.

To be honest though, it would take more than a vicious small animal to make any of these characters more interesting.  Whitemore II not only directed and gave us this milk float of a movie, but also wrote and created the dullest clichéd characters he could imagine.

Up really is only there to pose basketball teasers to Tech and has no other role in the movie.  Vaughn is such a bad pantomime baddie, that I half expected Brady to slip on a bright pink fake wig, a very large spotty dress and ask the audience where is the script, (it’s behind you!).  Tech’s girlfriend is just background and upstaged by potted plants.  Cruise’s girlfriend is just lifted out of movies which need a stereotypical black nasty female character and comes complete with neck shaking, clicking fingers and uh-ha noises.

The movie centres on Tech, which is really odd considering the main story is about Cruise and his conflicting feelings about trying to go pro or study medicine.  Tech’s character is not strong enough to command a movie and watching him collect a few bucks so he can place a bet on the revenge game against Jewelz is neither interesting nor gripping.

However, it is Cruise’s character that without a shadow of a doubt, makes this movie such a lame duck.  He whinges, whines and bores his way through the movie and he is such a dull character that actually I don’t care if he chooses basketball or medicine.  My only wish is that if he chooses medicine, he makes sure he overdoses on an experimental drug he makes in his dorm during the first trimester to save us from any threat of a sequel, (Oh wait, that would involve Cruise's character doing something interesting, so that's unlikely to happen!).

So did Crossover change my view that basketball is a dull sport?  Well no and mainly because the main character seems to shun away the thought of being a multi-millionaire NBA superstar in favour of studying.  Is playing professional basketball so dull that you’d rather stare at clear liquids for days on end to monitor whether or not they change into a slightly less clearer liquid?

Off course not, that’s ludicrous and one of the main reasons this movie falls down is because it is so unbelievable that a kid from a tough harsh background would shun a one in a million chance to make good for himself and his family.  And even if this was true and the kid just wanted a more stable career, that’s fine in real life, but as a movie?  Well it’s hardly popcorn entertainment is it?

I’ll end with one of Up’s trivia questions:  Which 2006 movie, directed by Preston A. Whitemore II and starring Anthony Mackie, is so dull, dire and dreadful, that it appeared at #46 in Colin and Wes’s top 100 bad movies of all time and bored one half of the team to Candy Crush Saga?

#47 Anne B. Real (Wes)

Anne B. Real

I know when you’re watching a list of 100 bad movies that pre-judging a film can be quite hard sometimes, but I honestly do try to go into these films with an open mind. Ok, so sometimes that’s impossible if you notice that the director is Uwe Boll (see here and here) or perhaps it has Madonna in one of the lead roles (see here), but when I read the plot summary on IMDB I hated this movie more than any of those. Perhaps this is unfair, after all IMDB users write all the summaries, but when a movie is described as “the coming of age story of a young female rapper, who finds her inspiration by reading the Diary of Anne Frank.” I found it incredibly hard to even press play on the DVD player. So what was it really like?

Before Cynthia’s father (David Zayas) died he gave her a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank. Now Cynthia (Janice (J Nyce) Richardson) spends her time outside of school reading the book and writing rap lyrics, which she only dares practice in front of the bathroom mirror. Her junkie/dealer brother Juan (Carlos Leon) is selling these lyrics behind her back to wannabe rapper Deuce (Eric Smith) who is claiming them as his own though. As Cynthia’s life becomes more chaotic, with one of friends being murdered and another getting shot by accident, she realizes (with the help of Anne Franks words), that she has to take responsibility for her own future and face her fears if she wants to live her dream of being a rapper. I on the other hand, ponder whether hiding from Colin in the attic just to get out of watching anymore of these dreadful movies is a viable option…

When you have a movie about someone trying to break from their humdrum life and get their break in the rap industry it’s practically impossible not to compare it to 8 Mile (or as it was known to a European audience, 1.609 Kilometre). In fact the makers of this movie are so proud of this comparison that they even use a review from IMDB on the front cover of the DVD, which proclaims Anne B. Real as “A More Intense 8 Mile”. It’s definitely a novel idea taking a review from IMDB and using that instead of from respected film magazines or newspapers that I’m just sad they didn’t take it further.

So for the next edition of the movie to be released, can I suggest these quotes for the front cover so they can REALLY sell this movie? Firstly they could use “This is a pretty good movie. I borrowed this from my Aunt, and I wound up really liking it”. Maybe a random IMDB user doesn’t have the same industry respect as say Total Film or Empire, but who hasn’t borrowed a movie from their aunt and loved it at some point? Also why not use “Literature and rap - who'd a thunk it?” although that may confuse potential viewers into thinking this is an MC Lars biopic. Perhaps they could use “none of the usual racist slang and filthy language” to reassure people that this movie is in no way a reflection of real life? Or my particular favourite “well I late to work it's 4:32 and I'm supposed to be there at 5:00”. This reviewer loved the movie so much they were late to work so they could tell you all about it. You don’t get that level of passion from a Mark Kermode review.

Using non-professional reviews may be the best way to recommend this movie as I think the best way to describe Anne B Real really is amateurish. Everything about this movie makes it look like it was filmed as a college movie project. The actors in general don’t look like they’ve made it past the point in acting class where you pretend you’re a tree, which is a nice irony as this movie is as slow paced as an Ent, with Richardson in particular putting in an uninspiring performance. She comes across as though she’s auditioning to be in the next Kevin and Perry movie, moping around like a stroppy teenager only coming alive when she raps (which apparently is something she learned how to do for this movie so kudos is deserved there). Shockingly she won a few awards at film festivals for her performance, which makes me wonder if any of the movies showing at them are coming up on our list soon.

Honestly it’d be an easy joke to say that this movie puts the “rap” into crap (which is exactly why I said it), but being a movie about rapping you have to wonder why there is so little of it. Cynthia has one poem that she constantly tries to write and rewrite throughout the movie, and the only real time she actually raps is right at the end of the movie. In a strange way this movie reminds me of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Both films have the lead reading inspiring quotes from the book that shapes them into the person they are, however Ghost Dog had a soundtrack produced by RZA (from the Wu Tang Clan), which is something Anne B. Real badly needs (it actually does have songs by A Tribe Called Quest and KRS-One on the soundtrack, but even these struggle to bring life to the movie).

Part of the reason why there isn’t much rap in this film may be down to director Lisa France wanting to make a film that was PG friendly. Whilst this may not be very realistic in either it’s portrayal of real life or of hip hop in general (I know there are plenty of intelligent, positive, inspirational rappers out there, but there’s many more who’s lyrics would make your granny blush if she could keep up with them), it is a nice sentiment. Unfortunately the movie does suffer from it, in that it seems like it’s the worlds only urban made for TV movie.

The story itself had the potential to make a decent movie and I liked some of the ideas, however this movie is ultimately lifeless. If it inspires anyone to go out and read The Diary of Anne Frank then that’s brilliant though, so hopefully some good has come from this movie being made. Unfortunately this movie is more diarrhea than diary though. It’s boring, predictable and skims past anything that is too challenging. 8 Mile? This movie is barely 8 Mil.

#47 Anne B. Real (2003) (Colin)

Cast: Janice Richardson (aka ‘JYNCE), Carlos Leon, Eric Smith, Jackie Quinores, David Zayas

Director: Lisa France

Genre: Drama

The next movie on our list is a coming of age drama about a talented rapper who tries to overcome her lack of confidence to break into the big time.  IMDb calls this ‘Anne Frank meets 8 Mile’ which is a little strange to say the least as I would never have associated Eminen with Anne Frank, (like I’ve never associated Vanilla Ice with Oskar Schindler).

The cover boldly claims that this is ‘grittier than 8 Mile’ and the various other reviews I have read always seem to mention this movie at some point.  Indeed Anne B. Real was released a year after and does cover a similar topic.  With so many associations, I am already beginning to wonder is this movie really a more powerful drama or is this just a lame cash in copy of 8 Mile?

Teenager Cynthia Gimenez, (Janice Richardson), dreams of becoming a rap star and spends most of her time in her room writing poems or in front of the bathroom mirror practicing her performance.  She lives with mum, (Denia Brache), older sister, Janet, (Sherri Saum), and drug dealer brother Juan, (Carlos Leon), in a run-down area of Harlem.  Times are tough and bills are frequently unpaid and the power cut off.

Cynthia is influenced by the Diary of Anne Frank, which she reads continuously after being given a copy by her late father, (David Zayas).  Cynthia obviously feels connected to her father by the book but also relates to Anne, a girl of a similar age who wants the world to understand her struggles.  Cynthia also learns from Anne that you can either sit back and accept your situation or, like Anne, stand up and fight back.

Cynthia’s poems are quite good, (well the characters in the movie think so, I’ve seen better scribblings from a bulldog chewing a pen), and unbeknowst to her, Juan is selling them to wannabe rapper, Deuce, (Eric Smith).

Juan is not only selling poorly written poems, but drugs and is spiralling out of control.  A user as well, Juan gets into more and more debt and becomes more and more desperate.  Eventually his actions brings Cynthia’s friends into the firing line, with severe and tragic consequences.

Will Cynthia find out about Deuce performing her songs and passing them off as his own?  Can Cynthia forgive Juan?  Will she find the courage to pursue her dreams of performing her songs to a live audience?  As long as you are prepared to sit through 90 mins of dreary boring hell, then these questions and more are answered!

The one question this movie does not answer is why it is called Anne B. Real, when Cynthia’s chosen rap name is Annie B. Real?  A small point, but one that bugs the heck out of me.

Also to me, Anne B. Real can mean 2 things.  The probably intentional version of ‘be real’ to yourself, don’t hide away or change anything about yourself for others.  Or, if you are pedantic like me, ‘be real’ as in ‘get a grip’, ‘realise your shortcomings’. 

‘You want to be a massive rap star?  Anne, B. Real.  Try a career in accounting or something instead’.

Whatever career Annie, (Cynthia), does choose, if the prerequisite is to walk around expressionless, gloomy or with your hood up all the time, then she would definitely be offered the role!

Thanks to Richardson’s performance Cynthia’s character is dull and lifeless.  I get no sense of the hardship she is enduring, the turbulent relationship with Juan is glossed over and the heartache she should be feeling looks more like heartburn.  Saum as Cynthia's sister, Janet, is actually much better and puts on a decent performance as a single mum, trying to keep the whole family together.  You can feel her sense of hopelessness and despair and in many respects I wish she had been cast as Cynthia instead of Richardson.

Also, I’m no hip hop enthusiast and I probably have no right to judge, but I’m sorry, I don’t think Richardson can rap.  This is a major flaw in a movie about a character who, whilst lacking self-confidence hides a massive talent for writing and performing rap music.  Fortunately, Richardson does so little rapping throughout the movie, that many people may not notice.

In fact, for a movie bases soley on rap music, there is very little rap music in the entire movie.  This is a shame as the soundtrack is just your average orchestrial movie background noise and does nothing to set the feeling and mood.  For example, in the Harlem slum Cynthia lives in we are met with violin and piano plinky plonky music which does not give me the feeling of the struggle and poverty within.  Surely, rap, music written by people about their surrounding and their feelings, would have been a better background to really give the viewer a sense of where Cynthia is coming from?

The script is awful and pedestrian and the best lines of the movie are lifted directly from the Diary of Anne Frank.  The characters are just a bunch of clichés with the worst being Deuce’s girlfriend who is the token loud black girl clicking her fingers, shaking her head and going ‘um um’ every 5 minutes.  The only character I liked was Cynthia’s dad, but that was only because it was good to see Dexter’s David Zayas on the screen again!  In truth though, he plays another version of Batista, but it was nice to see a good actor amongst the drab cast.

In summary, except for the acting, rapping, drama, excitement, talent and a storyline, Anne B. Real is exactly like 8 Mile.  Where 8 Mile is a genuinely interesting partial auto-biography of Eminem’s struggle to escape poverty and violence and be accepted as a serious white rap artist in a black dominated industry, Anne B. Real is the tale of a stroppy teen who locks herself away in her bedroom and spends 49% of the movie looking down at the floor, 49% hood up and grumpy and 2% rapping.

Do not let the blurb on the DVD case fool you, this is not grittier than 8 Mile and is nothing more than a shameless attempt to cash in on the success of that movie.  To the person at the studio who decided to lift this quote from IMDb and indeed, whoever on IMDb wrote this, I have 2 words for you:

B. Real!