bulworth is, in the end, the movie that we go
to when we want to see how clueless whitefolks have matured since
'grand canyon' which it now replaces as the stupidest movie on
the racial subjects in memory.
i had managed to miss this movie as it passed
through the various distribution channels, but a long conference
in dallas set me up for a bunch of free time in front of
spectravision. and so i got bulworth. as some of you may recall,
i made a wild guess at the scope of the film with a quote from
james baldwin as a review, giving bulworth no benefit of the
doubt. not only was i right about the story's level of pathos,
but the film gives me reason to suspect that warren beatty and
everyone else associated with the film are grossly pathetic as
well. i must say it makes me honestly feel sorry for halle berry,
who has basically been dealt a one, two punch. with this and the
film baps, to her 'credit', i'm starting to take david justice'
side in the divorce.
the plot for this bomb is disgustingly simple.
a corrupt politician decides to end his life by arranging his own
assassination. but before the deed is done, he gets a case of
jungle fever. he then decides to rap his campaign, and in a fit
of insomniacal delerium, paints himself 'black' through a campy
set of encounters with the most incredibily one dimensional
parade of black ghetto stereotypes i have ever seen on film.
ever. and i do mean ever. what's worse, is that everybody seems
to take this seriously. this film's ideas are perverse, bankrupt,
self-righteous, self-parodying and idiotic all at once.
bulworth is useful as a litmus test on racial
perceptions in the same way that real dicks and pussies would be
in inkblot. reasonable and sane people would look and seriously
question the ethics and sense of the person administering the
test, not to mention utter lack of imagination. but right now i'm
more interested in seeing how and which critics have been
bulworthed into saying something profound about this shitheap of
a message movie.
it gets a 55%, which should clarify my
percentage scale, everything below 50% means it's not worth
seeing.
But what did you *really* feel about it boohab?
A film about race relations that fails to
adequately represent the multifarious political interests of
those (black and white) who have a personal stake in defining
race relations? How reckless! Beatty's biggest mistake was
casting LeRoi Jones rather than Stanley Crouch.
Give Halle Berry back to David Justice? Why not
go all the way and hand her over to O.J.?
Oh,I forgot. That wouldn't work -- she's black.
"Bulworth" remains in the view of
this African-American the Best Picture of the Year.
funny how the memory works. i was trying to
think of the word malcolm x used, and instead coined
'bulworthed', but as soon as i read clldr's retort it came to me
in a flash. 'bamboozled'.
bulworth is the movie i would have expected the
beastie boys to have made, if they were actually as stupid as
they pretend to be. so let's get into it's multifarious flaws,
shall we?
first off, amiri baraka as the wizened old
wino/savant is an apropriate parody of himself, but quite
frankly, art evans did a much better job in 'tales from the
hood'. with all the talk about ghosts and spirits, whichever
moron directed bulworth could have done *something* spooky.
instead, he just put in spooks.
what else was a waste of film? the cop scene,
where m.c. bulworth jumps out of character into senator bulworth
and demands a badge number? hooo brother. i could have written
that in the 6th grade. in fact, i did. where's my hollywood
contract?
bulworth had one redeeming scene. count 'em
one. and that is the television interview. as far as i know, it
hasn't been done before. but all the faux-negritude was
unnecessary.
if bulworth was supposed to be an important
film, one wonders why absolutely no black politicians were
included in the story.
