Come take a spin on the carny ride

I've been planning a Rohmer retrospective for a long time on the site, but unfortunately his films have been in high demand on netflix since the great director's passing.

So instead I rented the Insane Clown Posse movie "Big Money Hustlas."

Alongside two brave companions and a six-pack of Firestone Pale Walker (thanks Ter) we set about to watch this jug-sterpiece and let me tell you, I don't know how we managed to make it out alive.

The film which, alleges to be a parody/homage of blaxploitation films, is really just a piss poor series of messy, poorly timed, cheap looking scenes filled with "clever" "meta" "jokes" (I assure you each of these words belong in quotations). It's an hour and forty-five painful minutes that stretches out seemingly to eternity.

The plot is simple. New York (really Detroit, a fact the characters bring up many, many times) is under the grips of crime kingpin Big Baby Sweets (Violent J). Big Baby "needs his mother fucking money", something he repeats countless times in every scene. He and his crew of white gangsta posers, an ape man and a gas-mask wearing ninja terrorize little old ladies and stock footage of deer. I know that sounds amazing but it's just so poorly executed it's jaw-dropping-ly painful.

The apoplectic and gluttonous chief of police (played by the guy who does Mort Goldman's voice on Family Guy) calls upon San Francisco super-cop/pimp Sugar Bear (Shaggy 2 Dope) to clean up the streets. In the tradition of blaxploitation characters Sugar speaks in rhyme and is the coolest guy in the (juggalo-filled) room. He is partnered with the only non-corrupt cop on the beat Harry Cox. Sigh. Harland Williams, who was clearly given no script as the creatives felt he could rely on his improv chops, plays the nebbishy Cox. Terrible mistake. Williams work in this film makes his work in Half-Baked look like Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot by comparison.

The film is loaded with cameos. Rudy Ray Moore drags out the last little scrap of credibility his Dolemite character has and pretty much runs it into the ground. He's not around for long though as "the movie couldn't afford him for that long." Mick Foley shows up as wrestler Cactus Sac (get it?) and the punk band the Misfits show up, for no discernible reason.

The movie is an unending stream of violence and vulgarity and I wouldn't have a problem with this if it weren't so damn amateurish and obvious. There is not one original or clever moment in the whole thing. Each attempt to be funny or meta or cool falls terribly flat. To make matters worse the DVD contains two ICP music videos which within seconds blow away the level of production values on hand for the movie.

Really this is a film for the sadomasochistic, the brave or the foolish. I mean unless you'd like to spend an hour and forty five minutes with a film where the most clever moment is a pair of ninjas trapping an obese stripper with an elaborate pizza trap, this is probably not worth your time.