Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

An idiotic parody of the so-called “hood” genre, Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood is filled to the brim with foul-mouthed, racist, sexist, and homophobic humor, but that really isn't my beef with this particular picture. After all, as they say, “comedy isn't pretty.” No, my complaint is a far simpler one, which is that this film just isn't funny. Unlike great spoofs like Airplane or I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, this gagfest lacks both structure and momentum, and, also unlike those aforementioned classics, the folks behind Don't Be a Menace don't simply seem to be taking good-natured jabs at a genre they truly love. Instead, the film comes across as mean-spirited, with a condescending attitude toward the genre it's satirizing -- a genre, I might add, that includes such bound-to-be classics as Menace II Society. If the material is uninspired, then the cast doesn't make matters any easier, with the majority of the players failing to reveal even the most rudimentary sense of comic timing, and, as if that wasn't bad enough, the project is further damned by music video vet Paris Barclay's bland direction. The only thing that keeps Don't Be a Menace from being a complete disaster is the effort of production designer Aaron Osborne, whose work provides hilarious background details (i.e., a water cooler filled with malt liquor and movie posters for films like Robopimp) and add some wit to this otherwise dim affair. Oh yeah, one more thing: If I see one more movie featuring that current favorite of obnoxious movie stereotypes -- the pair of abrasive Asian convenience store owners -- I'm not going to even going to think twice before getting up and leaving the theatre.