Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996) Miramax/Comedy RT: 94 minutes Rated R (pervasive strong language, crude humor, sexuality, drug and alcohol use, violent content) Director: Paris Barclay Screenplay: Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans and Phil Beauman Music: John Barnes Cinematography: Russ Brandt Release date: January 12, 1996 (US) Cast: Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Tracey Cherelle Jones, Chris Spencer, Sulli McCullough, Darrell Heath, Helen Martin, Isaiah Barnes, Lahmard Tate, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Keith Morris, Terri J. Vaughn, Vivica Fox, Bernie Mac, Antonio Fargas, LaWanda Page. Box Office: $20.1M (US)
Rating: **
The “Growing Up in the Hood” dramas popular in the early 90s get the Airplane treatment with Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, a mostly unfunny collection of scenes spoofing scenes from the likes of Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, South Central, Juice, Poetic Justice, Dead Presidents and others. I knew they’d get around to spoofing this subgenre sooner or later. I also thought it would be funnier. At best, it’s sporadically amusing and that’s being generous.
Don’t Be a Menace stars two of the Wayans brothers, Marlon and Shaw, as homies living in the same crime-ridden inner city neighborhood. Ash Tray (Marlon) is sent by his mother (Fox in a quickie cameo) to live with his father (Tate, Jason’s Lyric) who’s only a few years older than him. He starts hanging out with his gangsta cousin Loc Dog (Shawn) and their two friends, Preach (Spencer, A Low Down Dirty Shame) and Crazy Legs (McCullough, What’s Love Got to Do with It). Preach is a former gang member turned black activist; he also has a fetish for white women. Crazy Legs is wheelchair bound, the result of being paralyzed in a drive-by shooting. Ash Tray falls in love with Dashiki (Jones, The Players Club), a neighborhood girl with seven children from different fathers. She invites him to move out of the hood with her. This incurs the wrath of her former boyfriend Toothpick (Heath, B*A*P*S*), an ex-con who goes gunning for Tray with his gang.
Don’t Be a Menace opened the same weekend a massive snowstorm hit the East Coast. Since I couldn’t bear the thought of being cooped up in my house, I braved the elements and took a bus to the closest multiplex (the now-closed 69th Street Theater) to check out a new release or two. I didn’t expect greatness from Don’t Be a Menace. I just wanted it to make me laugh. Is that too much? In this case, yes. I chuckled maybe a few times, but I mostly sat there in silence picking out the movies it referenced throughout. I spotted Stand by Me, 9 ½ Weeks, Body of Evidence, Colors, Higher Learning, RoboCop 3 and Abby in addition to the aforementioned titles. It’s the only entertaining thing about this anemic spoof.
The only other bright spot in Don’t Be a Menace are the cameos by veteran actors like Helen Martin (Weeping Wanda from Good Times), Antonio Fargas (Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch) and LaWanda Page (Aunt Esther from Sanford & Son). It’s nice seeing them in action even if for just a few fleeting minutes. I’ll grant that Marlon and Shawn have a lot of comic energy. They play well off each with Shawn playing the straight role and Marlon going all-out as an extremely exaggerated version of a gangsta. It’s too bad the movie doesn’t serve them well. Blame it on director Paris Barclay who shows no sense of comic timing. The gags are clumsily staged, obvious, labored and frequently dragged out. Some are just plain stupid. Scene after scene falls flat with a big thud. He works mainly in TV; it shows in the episodic nature of his sole feature film credit. BTW, you can tell the Dead Presidents gag near the end was shoehorned in at the last minute. The 1995 Hughes Brothers crime drama opened only two months earlier.
Instead of hilarious, Don’t Be a Menace is mildly diverting. It barely leaves any lasting impression. It’s a huge disappointment when compared to I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, a blaxploitation spoof from another Wayans brother, Keenan Ivory (who pops up a few times in his little brothers’ movie). The difference is Keenan loves his source material and treats it accordingly by building an actual plot around the scenes and genre conventions he’s goofing on. Don’t Be a Menace simply recreates scenes and strings them together without rhyme or reason to little-to-no comic effect. There’s no flow to the movie; it’s more like a stagger. In short, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood is LAME! Its title is the most memorable thing about it; the rest is completely forgettable.
