Suburbian nightmare

Amos and Andrew (1993)

From the Netflix jacket:

"Racial stereotypes get skewered 1990s style in this satire from director E. Max Frye."

This was our first clue that this was gonna be a tough one. "1990s style?" What does that even mean? we wondered. Are the stereotypes going to be skewered by bad fashion and grunge music? Or were the 90s a particularly notable time for skewering racial stereotypes? Who writes these things?

After watching it, I still don't really know what that phrase means, or how it relates to this movie. So the whole thing basically revolves around one joke: Samuel L. Jackson moves into an affluent, all-white neighborhood and is subsequently mistaken to be a burglar. Cause he's black. So then when they realize their mistake the dumbass police have to cover their tracks by striking a deal with a criminal (Cage) so that he will go in there and pretend he actually was holding Jackson hostage the whole time.

It's not a bad joke, really. Kinda. But unfortunately, this is not a 5 minute Saturday Night Live sketch, this is a full, 96 minute movie. How did they they manage to fill up all that time, you may ask? Cue the bumbling cops, nosy attention-grubbing neighbors, and white criminal vs. black good guy shenanigans. It doesn't work. It doesn't "skewer" anything. It's pretty painful in fact, and despite being about 91 minutes too long, doesn't even have a real ending.

Both Nicolas Cage and Samuel Jackson do all right, I guess, considering what they have to work with. And really, this little stinker for SJ is no biggie, considering the next year he was going to go on to totally kick ass in Pulp Fiction. Unfortunately, Nic in 1994, not so much, but that's another post.

cory says.... hands down the worst movie so far.... at least in firebirds he had a couple scenes where he flipped out. this movie just set the bar on the ground.

But wait! Don't completely write this movie off, because without it Sir Mixalot would never have been commissioned to write its theme song (and, incidentally, create a new word) which plays through the credits and is quite a gem.

You think I'm joking?