Friday, 18 July 2003
On a lighter note, Undercover Brother just came out on video down here. I don't normally feel the urge to review movies, but this was such a good idea for a film that I just wish it had lived up to its potential (although it did have its moments). For those who haven't seen the movie, it's a variation on Austin Powers—but this time the hero has an afro, a medallion, platform shoes, and collars wide enough to land aircraft. Undercover Brother and his secret organization are locked in a never-ending struggle against The Man, who is trying to destroy every aspect of African-American culture (Steve Urkel was The Man's creation) and return us to a world of white bread and mayonnaise.
Undercover Brother was a great idea, poorly executed: It was like they wrote a rough draft of the script, did a half-hearted job of casting, and then put the film in the can. More than anything it made me want to send the filmmakers back to the studio and tell them not to come out again until they got it right—though I suspect they didn't get the time and budget to make a really great film.
Take the character of The Man, for example. The Man stays in shadow throughout the movie—we never see his face—so his most important quality is his voice. It needed to be menacing. Angry. The voice of an authority figure doing a slow burn, instinctively hating what he can't control; in short, it needed to be this voice. John Vernon would have been perfect in this role; everyone in the audience who'd seen Animal House (or I'm Gonna Get You Sucka) would have subliminally understood who The Man was. Instead, alas, The Man was played by an unknown actor named Robert Trumbull, whose voice sounded more like an unmasked Scooby Doo villain. I suspect he was cast because he looked like The Man, which under the circumstances was pointless.
Another character was named The Chief, missing a golden opportunity for a Bond joke—as the black M, the character should have been named X—and the other members of the secret organization were Smart Brother, Conspiracy Brother and Sistah Girl. Taken further, this could have been much funnier: How about Expendable Brother, the likable black sidekick who gets killed one scene after his first appearance? Why not have Angry Brother show up and parody Samuel Jackson's Pulp Fiction role? Dave Chapelle's Conspiracy Brother was largely a grab bag; the script didn't give him enough good conspiracies to work with (as opposed to, say, Dan Ackroyd in Sneakers), and sometimes he just morphed into Thin-Skinned Brother or Comic Relief Brother for a scene. With a bigger budget we could have had a dozen Brother characters, parodying every African-American stereotype ever to grace the silver screen; instead we got the all-purpose Angry Stoned Offended Paranoid Rasta Ebonics Brother, which left the audience not knowing what to expect.
Denise Richards as White She-Devil was, ah, easy on the eyes (and one of the script's most inspired moments was a She-Devil / Sistah Girl fight scene, which I won't spoil here), but she isn't a comic actress: Casting Heather Locklear or Liz Hurley would have bumped the movie up another notch. On the plus side of the casting couch were Neil Patrick Harris (TV's "Doogie Howser") as the token white guy, and Billy Dee Williams as the Colin Powell character, and I had no complaints about the two lead performers; but otherwise the casting didn't contribute much, and the script didn't make the most of the concept. Done right, this movie could have turned into a franchise; as it is, it's good for a few laughs… but, alas, Undercover Brother will not return to star in From Harlem With Love next summer.
- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:21 pm. comments.
