Booty Call (1997)
7/10
Extremely funny! I know the title sounds stupid, but...It's the truth
22 December 2005
Comedies like this one have to be written by a team. There's too much camaraderie, inside language, specified jokes…Comedies like this can also be considered absolutely absurd or rather original and interesting. I go for the second option, because I was amused by how intelligently the situations presented in "Booty Call" were resolved.

Two best friends. One of them has been dating, but can't get laid, so he needs the other one's help to go out on a blind date with his girlfriend's friend. The girl's friend in classy, the guy's friend is not, but somehow and ultimately they click. They go to the girl's house to play cards and things get hot; very hot…Hot enough to literally get into bed, just before the girls ask for a safe sex.

It is after the girls ask for a safe sex that things get complicated, and the two men must go in the search of security; that sometimes can include walking a dog. But what if the dog escapes? They can calmly go to buy their things in a store; but what if the store gets robbed? They can find the Judge (cameo by the stunning Bernie Mac) and he tells them not to have sex and immediately a hot lady asks him to hurry up? What if they end up in a hospital? The movie is short, and it develops its time in the friends' adventures to get their "booties". The script by Takashi Bufford and J. Stanford Parker is well constructed and kept real enough to maintain the entertainment. It also contains some very funny sequences that, helped by the performances, show the writers' natural comedic timing.

On the side of the camera, Jeff Pollack handles the job with plenty of skill, with a constant movement and rhythm, and the decision of making the image look much older than its actual time, which actually helps the movie's groove a lot. All the right calls for the man, even in terms of directing his actors; and the film's a comedy.

Not your ordinary comedy, a black comedy perhaps, but not because it has black humor; because it occurs around black people. Not in the black neighborhood here precisely, but in Chinatown. Chinatown is that neighborhood that supposedly has got everything, but in the middle of the night, when two friends are in need for condoms, it is practically deserted.

The performances fill the movie with motivation. The two pals are played by Tommy Davidson and Jamie Foxx (am I the only person that hasn't seen "Ray"?), both from the series "In Living Color", but the latter one fresh from his "The Jamie Foxx Show". Davidson stay calm until moments he looses it and we laugh; Foxx is a genius with all the one-liners and direct commentaries that keep you feeling him until the credits roll.

Vivica A. Fox plays the classy Lysterine, and she excels constantly. Today she is between the highest paid black actresses of the industry. Tamala Jones also got some roles after this film, and she is still working today. She has the innocent look but the killing attitude. It's like that with all the African-Americans really; they want to be aside. I don't mean the people in this film, but there are lots of examples, and it's a topic I would be pleased to deal with.
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