"POINT OF VIEW"


Baby Boy
Starring Tyrese Gibson, Ving Rhames, Snoop Dogg
Written and Directed by John Singleton


Growing up is hard enough as it is, but growing up as a young unemployed blackman in a John Singleton movie is even harder. John Singleton, the youngest and only African-American director to be ever nominated for an academy award for best director for his brilliant work on Boyz N the Hood, gives us the story of Jody, aka Baby Boy.

Tyrese Gibson, a talented musician/actor in his feature film debut, displays his acting talents in his portrayal of Jody, a twenty-year-old African-American who is still lives with his single-mom, even though he is the father of two babies of his own from two different mothers. Jody is at the point in his life where he needs to grow-up, or so he is told by just about everybody in his life. But just like every twenty-year-old, Jody believes that he is already a man and knows everything there is to know about the world. His “boy”, Sweetpea, played by Omar Gooding (the brother of Cuba Gooding from Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood and of Jerry Maguire fame), is a fellow much like Jody who spends his days being a slacker and befriending women. Jody gets to play all day and pretty much all night -- that is until he runs into some literal growing pains.

Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), is absolutely perfect as an ex-thug who dates Jody’s mom and tries to fill the father-figure void in Jody’s life, showing and telling him what his life could turn out like if he doesn’t start changing his ways. Then Yvette (Taraji P. Henson), the mother of one of his babies starts to feel a little underappreciated and demands Jody show her the kind of love that she shows him or else. Tack on a mean looking jailbird who wants a piece of his woman (played by the ever-so menacing Snoop Dogg) and a few other minor setbacks like finally getting forced out of the nest and getting dumped by the woman he loves, and aww, it looks like our Baby Boy is going to grow up.

One might think that after the numerous amount of “black” films that have been released since the rise and fall of gansta rap, that this film will be just another one of those films where punk-kids run around shooting each other, acting like P.I.M.P.s and then end up getting shot before the credits roll -- but if you think that, then you are sorely mistaken. Baby Boy could easily have been one of those movies, but this movie was done by John Singleton. John Singleton shows us this world on the surface, but his talent is revealing a world underneath that we all can relate to, even if we didn’t grow up in Crenshaw. This is where Baby Boy differs from all the other “black” films. The relationship between a mother and a child who is entering manhood, the relationship of a woman who loves and believes in the father of her child, the relationship between two men trying to grow up right with so much wrong around them, and the relationship between a boy who talks like a man and a man actually being a man -- are all things that make this film a winner.


THE RUNDOWN:

The Good: A touching look at a boy becoming a man and the choices he makes to get there.

The Bad: Contains a few cliches, but easily overlooked with the display of some really solid performances.

The Law: Be a man and go see Baby Boy.