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Pootie Tang is a music superstar, superhero, actor, farmer, and cobbler, in addition to about 50 other things. The film is set up as an extended clip that Pootie Tang shows as a guest on the Bob Costas Show of his new film, Sine Your Pity on the Runny Kine, which features Pootie Tang in superhero mode, battling corporate America.
I can see how many people might not care for this film, but I enjoyed it--a lot! It ended up with a 9 out of 10 from me. Those who like the film probably enjoy absurdism, have a familiarity with various facets of African American oriented pop-culture going back to at least the early 1970s, and do not mind silly humor delivered in compact packages primarily for entertainment value.
Pootie Tang is basically a spoof on various stereotypical (though rooted in reality) aspects of African American pop culture, ranging from Parliament/Funkadelic-styled goofiness and blaxploitation films to rap/hip-hop films, music videos, and other cultural items embraced by stereotypical African American pop culture, such as westerns, superhero films, and martial arts films (although the martial arts is also sourced from blaxploitation flicks). The bizarre vocabulary that Pootie Tang uses has similarities to George Clintonisms, which are found on Parliament/Funkadelic records (some of the best music you could listen to, by the way), and which have similarities to "jive talking'". All of that has continued in the culture and is currently most well known with the jargon used by rappers.
I mention all of this not to clue you in to how serious the film is--it's a wacky comedy, after all, but to help quell some of the criticisms that just take the film as stupid, without any basis in or relevance to the world at large. The humor in Pootie Tang works as well as it does because it's not that far removed from what it's referencing, which was often unintentionally (and sometimes intentionally) funny on its own.
The plot of Pootie Tang (which in the context of the film is really the plot of Sine Your Pity on the Runny Kine) is entertaining, partially because it is intentionally campy and formulaic. The performances are good, the music excellent, and the jokes are fairly rapid-fire and usually work. In many respects, the film actually reminded me of an alternate-culture (alternate universe, maybe) version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), which may not be the best thing to mention, as many people strongly disliked Sgt. Pepper's, but both films were charmers for me.
The review by messiercat noting the Christian religious analogy is also spot-on and adds another dimension to the film.
score 9/10
BrandtSponseller 15 January 2005
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0999357/ |
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30-6-2020 03:13:10
