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!
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