Subscribe Today

Get free stuff!

Bean Soup Times Gear

 Advertising
 About Us
 Subscriptions
Contact Us
Interns Needed
Send Page To a Friend

Movie Reviews

Baby Boy

I review books, not movies. When I received the task to review John Singleton, latest movie “Baby Boy” I thought they asked the wrong person. I don’t even watch TV or go to the movies. It was with much trepidation that I started this venture. I saw the movie and for the last four days have been attempting to write something.

One morning, in the newspaper, I read about Nikki Giovanni performance at the Choppin Theatre. She did a poem entitled “Three and Sixty Degrees.” When I read these lines, it all came together:

“And I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me/cause to write about me/because they never understand me/Black love is Black wealth and they/probably talk about my hard childhood/ and never understand/ all the while I was quite happy.” Nikki Giovanni

Thank you Nikki. “Baby Boy” is John Singleton’s coming of age story of Jodie an unemployed, father of two children by two different women, still living at home with his mother. The story is told against the backdrop of South Central Los Angeles, with all the incipient dreams and violence of that location.

It is told in the graphic language of the area, and with very graphic sex scenes both which I first had real problems with, but after a half an hour or so, didn’t even notice it. Which tells me these characters are speaking in their native language and are doing things in character. It is told from inside a family in which a mother has put her older son out when she got a new boyfriend.

And it is told from the streets as Jodie and his sidekick Sweet-Pea take on the world. It is also about the women and girls of the hood, a mother who has loved and lost a child and dares to launch another child and love another man; and Yvette who just loves Jodie and tries to hang on until he reaches some sort of maturity. What John Singleton does best is tell us about the boys in the hood and this movie is his best.

Like Nikki Giovanni’s poem, this movie is by us, for us, to us and about us. The movie is about love, more than anything else. Jody’s mother, Juanita and her man Melvin, who has already gone through all the phases of the hood, and made all the mistakes, including prison and wants a new life: A real brother from in the day.

Its’ about Jody and his women, Yvette and Peanut. And finally about Jody and his boy Sweet Pea who prays before he kills and in the last scene of the movie is baptized. We even have the ultimate evil in the old boyfriend Rodney coming home from jail and his last great line, “I’ve seen everything but Christ.”

The one scene that haunts me is when Melvin takes the gun from Jodie, cleans his prints off and takes it away. This marks a change in their relationship and Jodie’s coming of age. Two men, one from “in the day” and the other from the MTV/BET generation reach out and recognize each other--beautiful.

What chills me about this movie is that I know all these people. What is being shown is an accurate picture of some parts of our community. Does he glorify it? I don’t know if all artists glorify their subjects. The basic underlying tenants are true. But it took Nikki to remind me “Black love is Black wealth and they/ probably talk about my hard childhood/ and never understand/all the while I was quite happy.” Well-said Nikki, well shown John. A great movie.

Cleo R. Baker III

Send Page To a Friend