Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 29, 1995 TAG: 9505020025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And that slight shift, the new Ice Cube movie "Friday" says pretty convincingly, is enough to make the difference between getting by or going crazy.
Especially when things are really bad and getting worse the way they seem to be for Craig (Ice Cube), the gentle protagonist of this movie written by Cube and DJ Pooh and directed by music video veteran F. Gary Gray.
Craig's legendary Friday begins with some local church ladies waking him out of a deep sleep for an early soul-saving. Craig doesn't have much to get up for: He just lost his job and is resisting his father's efforts to enlist him as a dogcatcher.
His aptly named friend Smokey (Chris Tucker of "House Party 3") has less ambitious plans for Craig. Smokey just wants to sit around, get high, and figure out some way to keep Big Worm (Faizon Love) from killing him in lieu of payment for pot-selling profits.
There are other hazards to avoid in Craig and Smokey's south L.A. neighborhood, chief among them a frightening, glaze-eyed goon named Deebo (Tiny "Zeus" Lister Jr.) who strong-arms just about anything he wants from anyone at any time.
Director Gray doesn't try to pretty up the scene. The neighborhood is tough and scary, and guns make several matter-of-fact and disturbing appearances in the characters' lives. Good-looking women are ogled, fondled or slapped around. Others are verbally abused just for having the bad luck of not being attractive.
This is reality in the south L.A. neighborhood that was the setting for the unsettling "Boyz N the Hood," but in "Friday," the point is laughter. And that's part of the problem.
Some of what happens to Craig is funny. He's not much of a dopesmoker, so when he think his mother's porcelain dogs are barking at him, it's hard not to laugh at the look on his face. But there's no escaping the fact of where he is, or the gun in his bureau drawer or his apparent lack of a future.
The story attempts to address the serious side of Craig's life in a scene with his father (John Witherspoon). Dad's wisdom on the stupidity of using guns to settle arguments has weight - all of which is undermined by making him the butt of an incredibly juvenile toilet joke.
Most of the time, "Friday" manages to walk that fine line between drama and comedy with some grace. It's not a bad thing to be reminded that even in south central, there are people trying to live ordinary lives, untouched by the extraordinary violence of the times.
Friday
** 1/2
Rated R for profanity, violence and adult situations, a New Line Cinema release, 110 minutes, showing at Valley View Cinema.
by CNB