When you laugh, what are you laughing at? The parody? The memory of the original film? What are the filmmakers laughing at? The viewer may pause, aware that what is being parodied is film reality, a hyper-reality that may not be true to life, that may not, in fact, be real.
Let's just say that it involves Kool Aid, hot dogs and hot sauce.Īt other times the filmmakers miss by a mile, over-using cliches like malt liquor (in one case given to a baby in a bottle), or when an elderly woman is held up for her walker and in the beginning scene when two men are quickly shot dead in the street. Ashtray's big love scene, rather than tender and romantic, becomes the funniest moment in the movie. We think Loc Dog is making crack, but he's not. A mother comes home, catching her teenage daughter having sex and, rather than the usual boy-escapes-out-the-window scene, Mom dons her dominatrix outfit and wants to join in the fun. They catch the viewer sleeping and deliver deadly punches: A gray-haired grandmother who is not sweet and, instead, uses the trendiest 'hood profanity, smokes blunts of marijuana and out-dances Rosie Perez. In many successful scenes, the Wayans deftly play on our assumptions and cliches. Should he carry the Tech-9 or the Uzi? Which expensive leather sneakers? He finally settles on pink bunny rabbit slippers that he wears out in the streets. The result is more a pastiche of parody than a story. "Don't Be a Menace"-complete title, "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood"-follows two young men, Ashtray (Shawn) and Loc Dog (Marlon), in an effort to explain "how it really is" living in south-central, the premier "ghetto" in film and videos today. To understand most of its references, you should know, for example, John Singleton's "Boyz N the Hood" and "Poetic Justice," the Hughes brothers' "Menace II Society," Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever" and at least one music video by Dr. The film, partly written by Shawn and Marlon Wayans, relies on its audience's knowledge of current black popular culture.
#DON BE A MENACE TO SOCIETY FULL MOVIE SERIES#
Sometimes the family succeeds, like in Keenen Ivory Wayans's 1988 spoof of '70s films "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka." Sometimes they fail, like in the waning days of the Fox television series "In Living Color." In this movie, they succeed, for the most part. rap videos now exist to provide ample material for the Wayans family to do what it does best: poke fun at other people, this time in the 'hood with "Don't Be a Menace." The trick is to make the already ridiculous completely outrageous.
Enough gun-drug-pathology films and cliched south-central L.A.