Friday: Critic Reviews

Friday has energy, and sass, and the nerve to suggest that the line between tragedy and comedy may be in the bloodshot eye of the beholder.

This is a ruder, cruder version of the hip-hop movie House Party, and it offers a fascinating glimpse at the way street life enters pop culture.

Dirty, offensive, infantile and may launch a few sanctimonious opinion columns. And I mean that in the nicest way.

Cube is amusing, though he's really playing straight man to Tucker's frenetic and energized Smokey.

A crudely made, sometimes funny bit of porchfront humor from the 'hood.

Co-scriptwriters Ice Cube, DJ Pooh, and director F. Gary Gray find as much humor in well-observed detail as in the oddities of the film's world.

The original installment in the outrageous slacker trilogy starring Ice Cube.

A new generation of black talent (director Gray, actors Chris Tucker and Ice Cube) bring verve to this much welcome comedic view of street life in South Central, after mostly crime and drug pictures set there.

Director Gray tries (unsuccessfully) to create a '90s Cheech and Chong with inane lavatory humour, manic facial expressions, and plenty of close-ups of a tokin' Smokey. Passe the spliff.

Synthesizes blaxploitation and pot-comedy genres and melds them into a colossus of unending laughs.

It has a certain crude, rambling charm.

...much of the humor sailed right over my caucasian head.

Cube's charm and Tucker's frantic antics can carry the movie only so far before the wall-to-wall profanity, constant vulgar humor and male chauvinist ogling wear out their welcome.

Gray's direction is painfully flat, and curiously -- especially for a popular music video director like Gray -- lacking any interesting visual style.

Turns "Boyz N'The Hood" on it's head...simply hilarious

Hilarious hip-hop ghetto comedy. Chris Tucker's role as "Smokey" sets this one apart from it's mediocre sequels.

An energetic and genuinely funny low-budget flick. This is why we wade through all the really bad ones; to find the unexpected pieces of comedy gold.

Writer and director are both only 25 years old -- and provide another example of why it's best to beware of young men with movie cameras.

Friday stars several actors who can't act. It also stars a rapper who can't rap. His name is "Ice Cube" and, after seeing this movie (among others) he can officially name himself the king of movies that lack acting talent, as far as I'm concerned.