A prison inmate recites the story of two petty law breakers Ray Gibson (Eddie Murphy) and Claude Banks (Martin Lawrence). The two men are framed for murder whilst they are completing a bootlegging job in Mississippi for Spanky Johnson (Rick James) - a man to whom the two men owe a lot of money. The story chronicles their early life in prison in 1930's Mississippi right the way through to the present day.
This film gets off to a fairly impressive start; the bootlegging aspect of the film sets Ray and Claude up as a mismatched buddy duo (a tired scenario even by 1999, but amusing nonetheless). The 'no coloureds allowed' scene in the café was quite funny, but for me it was also clumsy and rather heavy-handed (as were many of the scenes in this film). Once they've collected the alcohol the two men lose all their money in a combination of stupidity and naivety which again was quite amusing. Where it really started to fall apart for me was when the two men end up in prison....
This seemed to be where the film almost grinds to a halt and becomes repetitive, tedious and uninteresting. Many of the Southern characters are dull clichés and sadly none of them get any kind of development and nor are we given any reason to care for any of them. The only mildly interesting character was Can't Get Right who shows himself to be an exceptional baseball player and ends up getting a pardon so he can compete professionally - although it's fair to presume that he made it big it might have been nice if this was added as a little insert at the end. As mentioned, poor characterisation is what really lets this film down; in most prison dramas there are usually at least one or two side characters who the protagonists form bonds with and this is what usually helps to give films of this nature some lift, but to me this really just felt like the Lawrence and Murphy show. It's probably inaccurate to class a lot of the cast as supporting characters as they acted more like extras than anything else. This point is further reinforced by the fact that many of the characters just disappeared from screen (literally) later in the film - presumably because they either die or end up being released - again this is never made clear. It's strange that this is classed as a story about two men spending 65 years in prison because to me it actually felt like a story without a story - many things seemed to happen that end up going nowhere, seemingly important plot points are established without being expanded upon (such as Claude's appeal). This aimless feel to the film sadly made it feel quite boring to me.
Lawrence and Murphy are the only things that really prevent this film from being a complete disaster; Murphy brings his usual energy to the table and is great fun to watch. Lawrence fares well here as the straight man and bounces well off Murphy. Together, Murphy and Lawrence's chemistry is good, but again even they start to become tiresome (particularly in the latter stages when they are old men). The film has some amusing prison moments - the governor holding his daughter's baby up to each of the inmates to determine who the father is was actually a stroke of genius. I have to admit that the ending was very clever as well. However, these good moments were few and far between.
Die-hard Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence fans may get something out of this, but there are far better prison dramas out there and this for me stands as one of the weakest that I've seen.
This film gets off to a fairly impressive start; the bootlegging aspect of the film sets Ray and Claude up as a mismatched buddy duo (a tired scenario even by 1999, but amusing nonetheless). The 'no coloureds allowed' scene in the café was quite funny, but for me it was also clumsy and rather heavy-handed (as were many of the scenes in this film). Once they've collected the alcohol the two men lose all their money in a combination of stupidity and naivety which again was quite amusing. Where it really started to fall apart for me was when the two men end up in prison....
This seemed to be where the film almost grinds to a halt and becomes repetitive, tedious and uninteresting. Many of the Southern characters are dull clichés and sadly none of them get any kind of development and nor are we given any reason to care for any of them. The only mildly interesting character was Can't Get Right who shows himself to be an exceptional baseball player and ends up getting a pardon so he can compete professionally - although it's fair to presume that he made it big it might have been nice if this was added as a little insert at the end. As mentioned, poor characterisation is what really lets this film down; in most prison dramas there are usually at least one or two side characters who the protagonists form bonds with and this is what usually helps to give films of this nature some lift, but to me this really just felt like the Lawrence and Murphy show. It's probably inaccurate to class a lot of the cast as supporting characters as they acted more like extras than anything else. This point is further reinforced by the fact that many of the characters just disappeared from screen (literally) later in the film - presumably because they either die or end up being released - again this is never made clear. It's strange that this is classed as a story about two men spending 65 years in prison because to me it actually felt like a story without a story - many things seemed to happen that end up going nowhere, seemingly important plot points are established without being expanded upon (such as Claude's appeal). This aimless feel to the film sadly made it feel quite boring to me.
Lawrence and Murphy are the only things that really prevent this film from being a complete disaster; Murphy brings his usual energy to the table and is great fun to watch. Lawrence fares well here as the straight man and bounces well off Murphy. Together, Murphy and Lawrence's chemistry is good, but again even they start to become tiresome (particularly in the latter stages when they are old men). The film has some amusing prison moments - the governor holding his daughter's baby up to each of the inmates to determine who the father is was actually a stroke of genius. I have to admit that the ending was very clever as well. However, these good moments were few and far between.
Die-hard Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence fans may get something out of this, but there are far better prison dramas out there and this for me stands as one of the weakest that I've seen.