Friday (dir. F. Gary Gray – 1995)
This is basically Dazed & Confused in Da Hood.
Taking place on a Friday, it concerns itself with Craig Jones (played by Ice Cube), who’s just been fired, apparently unjustly so, from his job; but Friday is his day off so he’s just hanging out with this buddy Smokey (Chris Tucker, in his debut) as they observe the neighbourhood – you’ve got the thug, the drug dealers, the hot woman across the road, the guys are trying to cope with parents, girlfriends, etc. The drama of the movie comes from Smokey owing a drug dealer $200 and if they don’t come up with the cash by the end of the day, there’ll be trouble.
It’s all light and funny but the last 15 minutes turn tense with a drive-by machine gunning and a no-holds barred brawl between Craig and the local bully. A funny, but all very brief cameo, by Bernie Mac makes things semi-interesting.
One question that is answered is that, yes, Chris Tucker has been mind-numbingly annoying since the very beginning; the depth of his character mostly rests on the twenty different ways he needs to say “Damn!” to convey a range of nuanced subtleties ranging between disgust and admiration.
Like Dazed and Confused, maybe repeated viewings leads one to becoming endeared to the neighbourhood characters, but really, this is just a bad movie.
tm sez: 4/10
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