Needed to be Mo' Better... a lot Mo' Better

view_and_review

I'm at a loss for words to describe this movie. I saw it but I'm still trying to wrap my ahead around what it was all about. Let me describe it as a witness would describe a crime.

I saw, what appeared to be Denzel Washington playing the role of Bleek Gilliam, a musician in Harlem. His manager's name was Giant who was a man in the form of Spike Lee. Bleek was involved with two women, Indigo and Clark who donned the flesh of Joie Lee and Cynda Williams. He also had a band of Lefty, Bottom, Rhythm Jones, and Shadow. They looked like actors Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, Jeff Watts, and Wesley Snipes.

What actually occurred on screen is a bit fuzzy. The paradoxically named Giant had a gambling problem. The two women in Bleek's life seemed to want him for different reasons and Bleek wanted them both for seemingly one reason: sex. His bandmates were unhappy with their pay situation, especially Shadow. These various issues made the conflict that is necessary for a movie but the conflict was so appalling and absurd.

Then you add the Spike Lee-isms. There was a similar trend in all of Spike Lee's earlier movies. The three that were used in "Mo' Better Blues" were

1.) The ghost walk. With a camera trained on a person's upper body and he is supposed to be walking towards the camera but there is no movement of the upper body whatsoever. How do I know the person is supposed to be walking? Because the scenery around him is moving as though the person is in motion.
2.) The merry-go-round. That's when a person is sitting still with a camera honed in on his head yet the background spins as though he's on a merry-go-round.
3.) The poor acting. This is usually reserved for Spike Lee himself but can also be used by other lesser known actors. It's easily identified by a robotic delivery of the lines with no emotion visible except the bare minimum necessary to convey the supposed mood.

Mo' Better Blues was so utterly pointless. It wasn't funny, it wasn't dramatic, there was no action... it just ran to completion with some random acts and random dialogue. Honestly, it was a huge disappointment. I didn't expect it to be a cinematic masterpiece but I certainly expected more than the trash I witnessed.

score 3/10

view_and_review 20 August 2018

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4295243/