Reviews

Non-white actors and actresses have faced an uphill battle since the earliest days of cinema. Even today, other than a privileged few superstars, many minority actors struggle to find roles. When they do get cast, it's often in a very limited breadth of stereotypical roles - whether it be the Asian nerd, the Middle Eastern terrorist, or the black gangster/thug. Actors often have to weigh their ethical qualms at playing a role they find tactless (or even out-and-out racist) against the practical demands of paying the bills.

In Hollywood Shuffle, Robert Townsend shows the African-American side of these difficulties in the story of aspiring actor Bobby Taylor in late-80s LA. Bobby's story is interspersed with fantasy sequences that address and parody various popular films and genres.

For an indie film, the visual look of Hollywood Shuffle is quite good. Apart from some actors playing multiple roles, you wouldn't think this had a budget barely over five figures. I certainly respect anyone who would self-fund a movie the way Townsend did, especially to draw attention to an important social issue such as this. However, the movie suffers from several problems. The balance of comedy and seriousness seems skewed, and the writing often seems very ham-handed and uneven. Many of the fantasy sequences are too long and drawn-out, and Bobby's story seems to suffer for it, feeling too simple and rushed. It feels like Townsend couldn't decide between two types of movie - one a silly comedic satire lampooning Hollywood from a black perspective, and the other a more serious story with a more wry sense of humour derived from his real experiences as a struggling actor - and so he just tried to make both (but succeeded at neither).

Much of the movie seems like it would have been dated even at the time it was released. It feels like it would have been more at place if released five to ten years earlier, with references to Superman, Rambo, Dirty Harry, Roots and the jive-talking' blaxploitation genre that was so popular in the 70s (but, as far as I know, was long-dead by 1987). Perhaps this dated feeling is because of the big shift that was about to took place in the late 80s and early. Hip hop was growing and maturing into a real mainstream force, TV shows like In Living Color and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were soon to become huge hits, and more nuanced portrayals of urban black life like Do the Right Thing and Boyz n the Hood were in the pipeline. Now that's not to say that these new portrayals and perceptions of black characters and life weren't without their own particular problems - just that much of what Hollywood Shuffle presented feels like it would have been irrelevant by then.

Overall, I agree with some of the other reviewers in the use of the word "uneven". I'd like to give it more credit for its ambition and guts, but it seems like it didn't really have much effect on things.

Final summary: 4/10 | C-

By its very nature, Life in a Day is an ambitious film. It seeks to encapsulate the human experience and all that it entails: life and death; love and hate; poverty and wealth; our dreams and our fears; and so on. I would argue that it does so successfully - or at least as successfully as possible for an undertaking of such scope (80,000 submissions totalling 4,500 hours of footage cut down to just an hour and a half!). It manages to strike a balance between the beauty of professional shooting and the raw visceral power of amateur footage. Very little seems contrived or awkward, and the editing and music do not usually distract from the simple energy of the vignettes being shown. In fact, the score is quite good and the editing only comes to the forefront when it's doing something meaningful - revealing links, emphasizing contrasts, or completing a thought.

A few stories are highlighted and revisited as the film progresses, but in general it never lingers too long on one scene. You would think this might hinder the presentation of some of the slower, more peaceful aspects of life, but it really doesn't. In fact, the lasting impression from this film is not one of chaos but one of unity and connection. That being said, at times the emotional roller-coaster you are being put through can be slightly bewildering. Some viewers might dislike how quickly they are brought from one emotion to another, but most will probably be too engaged to feel more than a twinge of regret that a particular scene couldn't last longer.

Some might argue that the more brutal realities of life are underrepresented (war, death, crime, prejudice, etc.), but I think that perception is probably due to how much we are bombarded with them by our daily news and entertainment. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of misery on display here (whether it be as simple as the sting of rejection or as profound as the fear of dying), but it's often more subtle than explicit and it's tempered by a positivity that sometimes seems to be lacking in our view of the world.

As a cinema enthusiast, this film excites me with the prospect of increasing interactivity and grassroots power. As a human, it gives me hope that we can live in harmony and understanding. And I'm usually quite the cynic.

Final summary: 9/10 | A