'Don t Be a Menace'

Publish date: 2024-08-22
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‘Don’t Be a Menace’

By Esther Iverem
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 15, 1996
 


Director:
Paris Barclay
Cast:
Shawn Wayans;
Marlon Wayans
R
Under 17 restricted

Enough gun-drug-pathology films and cliched south-central L.A. rap videos now exist to provide ample material for the Wayans family to do what it does best: poke fun at other people, this time in the 'hood with "Don't Be a Menace." The trick is to make the already ridiculous completely outrageous. Sometimes the family succeeds, like in Keenen Ivory Wayans's 1988 spoof of '70s films "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka." Sometimes they fail, like in the waning days of the Fox television series "In Living Color." In this movie, they succeed, for the most part.

The film, partly written by Shawn and Marlon Wayans, relies on its audience's knowledge of current black popular culture. To understand most of its references, you should know, for example, John Singleton's "Boyz N the Hood" and "Poetic Justice," the Hughes brothers' "Menace II Society," Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever" and at least one music video by Dr. Dre or Snoop Doggy Dogg.

"Don't Be a Menace"—complete title, "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood"—follows two young men, Ashtray (Shawn) and Loc Dog (Marlon), in an effort to explain "how it really is" living in south-central, the premier "ghetto" in film and videos today.

The result is more a pastiche of parody than a story. Loc Dog asks Ashtray for fashion advice. Should he carry the Tech-9 or the Uzi? Which expensive leather sneakers? He finally settles on pink bunny rabbit slippers that he wears out in the streets.

Outrageous is the key word here. In many successful scenes, the Wayans deftly play on our assumptions and cliches. They catch the viewer sleeping and deliver deadly punches: A gray-haired grandmother who is not sweet and, instead, uses the trendiest 'hood profanity, smokes blunts of marijuana and out-dances Rosie Perez. A mother comes home, catching her teenage daughter having sex and, rather than the usual boy-escapes-out-the-window scene, Mom dons her dominatrix outfit and wants to join in the fun. We think Loc Dog is making crack, but he's not. Ashtray's big love scene, rather than tender and romantic, becomes the funniest moment in the movie. Let's just say that it involves Kool Aid, hot dogs and hot sauce.

At other times the filmmakers miss by a mile, over-using cliches like malt liquor (in one case given to a baby in a bottle), or when an elderly woman is held up for her walker and in the beginning scene when two men are quickly shot dead in the street.

The viewer may pause, aware that what is being parodied is film reality, a hyper-reality that may not be true to life, that may not, in fact, be real. When you laugh, what are you laughing at? The parody? The memory of the original film? What are the filmmakers laughing at?

"Don't Be a Menace" constantly draws attention to the fact that it is a movie. It makes no effort to pull us into a fictional world or to draw our sympathy. At the beginning of the film, as Ashtray's mother takes him to live with his father, she tells him she won't see him again because "You know there aren't any positive females in these movies." Later, Ashtray tells a little boy that both of them are part of an endangered species. "Why, because we're black males?" the boy asks him. "No," Ashtray replies, "because rappers are taking all the good acting jobs."

We remain on the outside looking in and, in some cases, laughing.

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

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