coming soon...

By Daniel Strange

BABBLY OVERLONG INTRO
I come not to praise Booty Call, nor to bury it.

Here at Movie Call.org, your one-stop online movie review/pleasure palace, we compare every movie we see to Booty Call for three very good reasons. The first, I can't remember. The second is that it's a faintly amusing gimmick (special emphasis on the word faintly). And the third is that Booty Call is an absolutely average-grade movie.

Sometimes it soars to unexpected heights. Sometimes it dips to disappointing lows. It never becomes downight unwatchable, though at times it flirts with being boring, and ultimately when the film is over you will probably have more good feelings about it than bad ones -- though not too many good feelings. In sum, it excels at mediocrity.

Speaking of which, here's my review of it.

THE BIG BOOTYLICIOUS BOOTY CALL REVIEW
Okay. You got your two guys, one is a scoundrel and one is kind of uptight, and of course, they are best friends. The scoundrel is played by Jamie Foxx, the uptight guy is played by Tommy Davidson. Tommy Davidson wants to score with a prudish chick he's been seeing, played by Someone Cute, so for some reason he and Jamie Foxx go on a double date with her and her kinda-Nasty friend played by Vivica Fox. Who is hot with a capital "O."

The double date and the interplay between the two couples is pretty damn entertaining. In all honesty, I feel like these parts verge on being "theatrical," like one of those American Playhouse productions where they make a tv movie out of a play but you can still tell the material belongs on a strage because everyone is just standing around talking most of the time. And this was a pleasant surprise, because quick-witted verbal exchanges and insightful observational monologues on the differences between the sexes is not what I expected from a movie called Booty Call.

Then the movie's middle section moves into a sort of Trials-of-Hercules thing, and things get crappy faster than shit through a goose.

When the two main guys are told by their respective women that they need to get condoms OR ELSE NO SEX, they begin a quest which is at best repetitive and at worst unfunny. Compounding the problem, there's no clear sense of an overall design; it feels like the writers started running out of ideas -- a point underscored by recurrent use of the same settings -- and there's the increasing suspicion that the movie might be on an inexorable slide towards increasingly slapsticky hijinks.

This suspicion turns out to be true.

Okay, no big deal. Our heroes eventually get their shit together and reunite with the women long enough for a few more dialogue scenes (a sorely-needed plus). The chemistry between the four leads is really the gas that keeps this thing running, so every little bit helps. But just when things are starting to get interesting again, one of the weirdest plot points of recent moviegoing memory come along, and one of the characters gets hit by a stray bullet.

Now is a good time to mention that this movie features more shooting scene than I would expect from a comedy.

Anyway this propels us into the film's third and final act, which might be subtitled Hospital Hijinks. Although still slapsticky and ultimately random, this section at least has the female leads playing larger roles, and maintains some sembelance of their interplay with the male leads. And when the end finally coems, it's not a moment too soon; you can picture the writers slumped over their word processors, dripping sweat from exhaustion at trying to pad out their flimsy original idea.

Once again, I'll take my cue from the movie and wrap up this review.

IN SUMMATION
I had a good time with Booty Call, but also had some definite problems with it. All of them being structure. Story-wise it's a POS but the characters and the performances by the leads give it some juice. All in all, it's a pretty average movie. Which I guess makes Booty Call about as good as Booty Call.

Booty Call = about as good as Booty Call.

eonline.com Booty Call review
wwlp.com Booty Call review
Times Free Press Booty Call review
Washington Post Booty Call review
Enquirer.com Booty Call review
American Humane Association Booty Call assesment
Cinematter.com Booty Call review
Globe and Mail Booty Call review
Boxoffice Magazine Booty Call review
Deseret News Booty Call review
Austin Chronicle Booty Call review
James Berardinelli Booty Call review
Mr. Cranky Booty Call review
Andrew Hicks Booty Call review
Michael J. Legeros Booty Call review
efilmcritic.com Booty Call review
wolfpackproductions.com Booty Call review
stairwell.com Booty Call review
New York Times Booty Call review
Roger Ebert Booty Call review