Three Strikes
Written and Directed by DJ Pooh.
Starring : Brian Hooks, N'Bushe Wright, Faizon Love, E40, Starletta
DuPois,
George Wallace, David Alan
Grier, Dean Norris, Barima McKnight and Meagan Good.
(available on video)
* (One Star)
Yet another vain and unfunny
attempt to render the casual daily routines of the hood into a comedic,
ah hell, a 'Friday' follow-up. It starts out all wrong with sympathetic
voice-over about how an anti-hero stressing out over his third strike ("Two
turns in the joint are alright - in 1993, the third one got you twenty-five
years". "For $200, Alex, "'What is the 'Three Strikes' law?'". "You are
correct!"). Rob (Brian Hooks), our protagonist (must the black community
have to look up to a man able to use the word 'pussy' forty times in a
sentence, even speculating on some sort of 'pussy pot pie'; a native dish,
I suppose) gets himself near danger time and time again - the police hot
on his trail - he drags his ass through the hood spewing familiar dialectical
jokes, even more familiar bathroom jokes and a plot point involving a fat
girl that was point blank stolen from the aforementioned film titled from
a day of the week. 'Three Strikes' even ends in a complete state of cop-out:
the whole premise based on this idea that Rob is inches from danger and,
in the end (notice how I don't even bother with a bleeding spoiler alert?),
the judge simply calls his vast quantity of crimes (even in 84 minutes,
he does enough wrong to put him away for two lifetimes) a broken parole
and not a third strike. Geez, why couldn't they have let that out of the
bag in the opening moments, saved me the trouble of being bored with this
piece of cinema veri-garbage. Saving grace earning the one star? David
Alan Grier. The comedian manages to be funny even in the face of unconscionable
chagrin. Any funny man able to overcome those odds has performed a feat.
Any film this bad should have been banished straight-to-video.
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2000