Mo’ Money (1992) Columbia/Action-Comedy RT: 89 minutes Rated R (violence and language) Director: Peter Macdonald Screenplay: Damon Wayans Music: Jay Gruska Cinematography: Don Burgess Release date: July 24, 1992 (US) Cast: Damon Wayans, Stacey Dash, Joe Santos, John Diehl, Harry J. Lennix, Marlon Wayans, Mark Beltzman, Almayvonne, Quincy Wong, Kevin Casey, Larry Brandenburg, Garfield, Gordon McClure. Box Office: $40.2M (US)
Rating: ***
There are two ways I can approach the action-comedy Mo’ Money. I can speak of it either as cinema or entertainment. Only one makes sense; can you guess which one?
In order to answer the above query, you’ll need a frame of reference first so here’s the plot of Mo’ Money in a nutshell. Damon Wayans (In Living Color) starts as Johnny Stewart, a street-level con man forever pulling scams with younger brother Seymour (Marlon Wayans). His life is going nowhere. He’s never gotten over his father, a cop, being killed on the job. He’s just been arrested for yet another petty crime. His father figure Lt. Walsh (Santos, The Last Boy Scout) urges him to get his act together. All Johnny really cares about is money and mo’ money. What finally kicks his ass into gear is a chance meeting on the street with an attractive upscale woman named Amber (Dash, Clueless). He follows her to her workplace, a credit card firm, and lies his way into a legitimate job in the mailroom where, despite his best efforts to go straight, he gets in over his head in a stolen credit card scheme run by company head of security Keith (Diehl, 1984’s Angel).
Allow me to elucidate on the cinema vs. entertainment issue. Should I examine Mo’ Money for its cinematic merits or entertainment value? Although not strictly mutually exclusive, they are two separate matters in this particular case. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Mo’ Money is entertaining without being any good.
Directed by Peter Macdonald (Rambo III), Mo’ Money is really three types of movies; it’s a comedy, an actioner and a romance. It’s not exactly a seamless blending of genres. As a comedy, it’s often very funny. Damon has a real gift in this area. It obviously runs in the family because little brother Marlon, in his first major role, has some good moments too. One of their best bits is when they con a foreign deli owner into giving them a free lunch. It involves Jonny posing as a mentally impaired person and wrecking the place while Seymour explains the “lactate” in a turkey sandwich will calm him down. I know it’s politically incorrect to laugh at such a thing, but the Wayans make it work.
As an action movie, it has a few good scenes within a vaguely defined plot about credit card fraud and stolen goods. The opening scene has Keith and his guys killing a company executive and stealing a computer tape from his briefcase. It’s never explained what’s on it that makes it worth killing for. Although the chase scene in the third act is well done, the shift from comedy to wild action is noticeably jarring. Is it just me or is it weird that Johnny jumps off a moving subway onto a car like an action hero? Where did that come from?
As for the romance, it might work better with an actress who can actually act. Dash is sexy and attractive, but lacks the ability to read her lines in a believable manner. It doesn’t help that this portion of the story is poorly developed. It should be a big deal when Amber finally finds out how Johnny gets the money he’s been flashing, especially since she tells him flat-out she’s not the material girl everybody thinks she is. The eventual revelation should cause a rift; things like this generally do. In this case, it’s glossed over in favor of the aforementioned chase through Chicago.
The different parts of Mo’ Money aren’t an easy fit in the hands of Macdonald. The screenplay by Damon Wayans needs some work. He fails to follow through on ideas like the conflict between black people with money and those without personified by Tom (Lennix, The Five Heartbeats), Amber’s arrogant boyfriend who looks down on Johnny as ghetto trash. There’s a lot of room for satire here, but it gets dumped as soon as Tom does by Amber. Also, Santos is way underused in an underdeveloped role.
I realize I’ve pointed out many faults, but the truth is I like Mo’ Money. It’s a 90s version of the 70s urban comedies starring Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier- e.g. Uptown Saturday Night, Let’s Do It Again. Like I said a few times, it’s funny. I laughed a lot. The chemistry between the Wayans brothers is solid. There’s a good running gag about this tall co-worker (Almayvonne) pursing Johnny like Big Ethel goes for Jughead in the Archie comics. There’s a great courtroom scene featuring a defense lawyer who’s a cross between Johnny Cochran and an evangelist. All of this begs the question of why I even bothered to analyze Mo’ Money when it all comes down to it simply being funny. The key word is “why”; the answer is “because”.
