June 27, 2001 | After trudging through the swamplands of Florida for his incendiary Rosewood and parading through the mean streets of Manhattan for his reconstituted Shaft, John Singleton has returned to his roots in South Central L.A. for Baby Boy.
Intended as a companion piece to Boyz N the Hood, the astonishingly self-assured 1991 debut feature that established him as a 23-year-old wunderkind, Singleton’s latest effort is in many ways a far less polished piece of work. Indeed, while Baby Boy actually is Singleton’s sixth credit as writer-director, it plays more like the product of an unseasoned but furiously passionate neophyte, one who is still struggling to find his own voice even as he shouts at the top of his lungs. At once brazen and heartfelt, it is an unstable mix of didacticism and melodrama, soap opera and broad comedy – and it sometimes fuses all these things, and more, into the fabric of a single scene. Sympathetic viewers repeatedly risk whiplash while maneuvering through its wild and frequent mood swings.
To put it bluntly, but not dismissively, Baby Boy is a mess. And yet, to a large degree, its ungainliness is forgivable, as it reflects a breadth of ambition, not a failure of talent. If Singleton doesn’t make things easy for us, that’s probably because this wasn’t an easy movie for him to make. He’s obviously struggling here to sort out his conflicted feelings about the issues he’s raising and the situations he’s dramatizing in his coming-of-age story about a feckless African-American homeboy who must be dragged, kicking and screaming, toward adulthood. Unlike Hood, his new movie isn’t, strictly speaking, autobiographical. But Baby Boy leaves you with a strong impression that Singleton sees much of himself, and has invested much of himself, in his lead character.
Tyrese Gibson, an exceptionally photogenic model, singer and MTV VJ, acquits himself impressively in his first starring role as Jody, an aimless 20-year-old who has already fathered two children by pliant “baby mamas,” but still lives at home with his own mother. During the opening minutes of Baby Boy, Jody accompanies one of the baby mamas, Yvette (Taraji P. Henson), to an abortion clinic. (Even though the young woman loves Jody, she’s not about to make the same mistake twice.) But he’s not sensitive enough, or even patient enough, to stick around and offer comfort after they return to her place. He borrows her car keys, and takes off.
Despite this evidence to the contrary, Jody isn’t entirely benighted. He recognizes that, without a job or a goal or anything like a sense of direction, he is going nowhere fast. At the same time, however, he grudgingly admits that, as long as Juanita (A.J. Johnson), his mother, is unwilling to boot him out of their South Central home and into an independent life, he isn’t likely to make the first move of his own accord.
Singleton vividly renders Jody’s indolence – maybe a little too vividly, but never mind – by revealing how the young man imagines himself as fully grown but only semi-conscious in his mother’s womb. Unfortunately, Jody isn’t nearly so self-aware when he’s wide awake. Still, he stumbles forward. He tries his hand at entrepreneurship, selling stolen dresses to women throughout his neighborhood. And in a jarringly funny scene that underscores the staggering extent of his chutzpah, Jody offers some self-improvement advice to his children’s mothers. (“Hey, watch some PBS or something!”)
Ultimately, Jody is propelled toward maturity, or something like it, by forces beyond his control. Much of that force is provided by his mother’s new beau: Melvin (Ving Rhames), a smooth-talking, sharp-dressing ex-convict who claims, not altogether convincingly, to have renounced his violent past. Jody bitterly resents the older man’s presence, and his worst fears are confirmed when Melvin moves in. He rightly suspects that it’s only a matter of time before his mother decides the house isn’t big enough for the three occupants. (A nice touch: The movie tacitly acknowledges, but never overstates, the sexual tensions not so far beneath the surface of the bond between the attractive young single mother – who appears to be, at most, in her mid-30s — and her hunky 20-year-old son.) Sure enough, Juanita soon starts to drop hints that it’s time Jody left the nest.
For his part, Melvin tries to teach Jody a thing or two about the downside of thug life. When Jody refuses to listen, Melvin expresses himself non-verbally. (Rhames is terrific at conveying how Melvin’s easygoing manner is sustained only through sheer force of will.) But even then, Jody has to learn some things on his own, the hard way.
Like many other films about young African-American males at risk- including, of course, Boyz N the Hood — Baby Boy percolates with the constant threat of sudden, lethal violence. For the most part, however, Singleton avoids the usual clichés and stereotypes that have become associated with what might be called the “hood” genre. Only in the final half-hour, when Yvette’s former boyfriend (played, with sneering conviction, by rapper-actor Snoop Dogg) returns from prison to make a nuisance of himself, does the movie resort to gunplay to propel its plot. And even then, the mayhem is presented without exploitation or glamorization – Jody, it turns out, is a bad shot, and an even worse gang-banger – while Singleton maintains his focus on the evolution of character, not the accumulation of victims.
At heart, Baby Boy is about how some young black men grow up without fathers, how they are raised by mothers who mean well, but who permit their sons to indefinitely delay adulthood. The movie is sometimes hilarious, sometimes deeply affecting, and just about always fascinating as it shows how these young men improvise their way through family ties and responsibilities without the benefit of older male role models.
At first, Jody’s best friend, Sweetpea (well played by Omar Gooding, brother of Cuba Gooding Jr.), appears to be nothing more than comic relief. As the movie progresses, however, Sweetpea reveals an unexpectedly deep yearning for the stability of a nuclear family, even as he blusters through an argument with his girlfriend and her mother.
Later, after Jody is beaten and robbed by some young neighborhood punks, Sweetpea is enraged – not so much because the punks attacked his friend, but because they “didn’t respect their elders.” Reflexively practicing the tough-love discipline of a stern paterfamilias, Sweetpea takes off his belt and thrashes one of the chief offenders. Which, when you think about it, is a sign of Sweetpea’s own advancement toward maturity. After all, he doesn’t take his gun and blow the little punk’s head off.
