IHAO on ... Amos & Andrew

Let me just lay out the cast real quick for this: Nicolas Cage, Dabney Coleman, Giancarlo Esposito, Brad Dourif, and friggin' Samuel L. Jackson.  That is a pretty fine acting pedigree, with lots of familiar faces playing smaller, incidental roles as well.  I want to lay all that out right now, because you need to learn the same thing that I did: great actors do not good movies make.

This is a racism movie.  You know what I mean: a film made specifically to use racism as a crutch for comedy, drama, and character development.  Like the horrendous White Man's Burden.  Except this one is a comedy.  You see, a successful black man moves into his new house, but his snoopy neighbors see him through the window without knowing he just moved in and called the cops, because a black man holding a stereo, well you just know what that means.  That is almost  direct quote there, by the way.  So, the cops go to check it out, and one of the them pulls his gun and fires on the guy and destroys his car.  Then they learn that the black man owns that house and this is a huge problem.  So they get a career-criminal to break in, fake a kidnapping, and then clean it all up.  But the press shows up and other stuff and ... sigh.

The problem with this movie is that while it is clearly supposed to be a comedy, it isn't funny.  It tries so hard to be poignant it forgets that it is setting up a bunch of things for us to laugh at.  Nicolas Cage is asked by the cops to fake-kidnap Samuel L. Jackson.  There should be lots of humor there.  But nope.  Just ... a whole sequence with Jackson refusing to shake a dog's paw because dog's hate black men.  He says the much worse word, by the way (again).  I do not have the cahones to write that on my blog though.

Ultimately, both characters learn something about racism, the ignornant people of the town are shown to be ignorant, and that's the end.  Except the townsfolk never really get any comeuppance, Cage's character doesn't learn anything because he wasn't racist to begin with, and they end the film on a racist joke followed by a terrible sign joke, if you could even call it that.  It's just ... sigh.

Let me see you face-pa-a-alm.  Face pal-pa-pa-pa-palm.

I hate sighing.  I hate that this movie is like this.  This movie should have been hilarious!  It should have been great.  But it is just ... bad.  And boring.  And not bad enough to really make me angry, or even make me feel anything, really.  It just exists, and is bad, and that's unfortunate.  Don't watch it unless curious.  It'll be a waste of time in every way.  It isn't even bad enough to be funny.  I type it again ... sigh.

Grade: C