"Fast & Furious" slips to No. 3 in sales and rentals.
Yes, 'Obsessed' is the Most Significant Film of the Decade
In some other, alt Spock-with-a-beard universe, the new movie “Obsessed” would be as little as its producers wish it to be: an elongated, filmed catfight targeted toward young men who'll willing hand over their hard earned pay in hopes of witnessing the female leads rip each others’ shirts off.
But we don't live in an alt universe. We live in our universe. And in our universe, “Obsessed” is the most significant film of the decade.
It stars Idris Elba whose secretary, Ali Larter, overreacts to some mild on-the-job flirtation, and things escalate from there between Larter and Elba's wife played by Beyoncé Knowles. A perfectly fine little bit of been there/done that "crazy woman goes crazy for some other woman's man" programmer.
“Fatal Attraction” and “Play Misty for Me.”
But by accident or design -- I'm guessing accident – “Obsessed” carries the most social-political wallop entertainment's had to offer since the Obama and Clinton stand-ins got into a tussle on WWE.
First, Elba and Knowles play a middle-class, happy-but-bored married couple who are feeling the stress of raising their first child ... And they just happen to be black.
What?
How'd all that get past the fake liberal studio execs who rarely if ever portray middle-class black families in lead roles in films?
And the black man's got a white person working for him. And she's a she. And she's hot for the black man, all of which is a flip on a grip of social fears that have been pervasive on film going back to “Birth of a Nation.”
And to protect her family, the black wife of the black man -- SPOILER ALERT … unless you've seen the trailer -- kicks the crazy white woman's pale backside. That makes the film the biggest black woman's wish fulfillment revenge fantasy that doesn't star Tyler Perry in drag ever!
And while the text of the movie is clear, it's the subtext that is even more powerful. I can't help but read Elba as President Obama, Larter as a crazy tea-bagger and Knowles as Michelle Obama come around with those cut guns she's always sporting ready to dump that tea-bagging you-know-what back in Boston Harbor.
I'm sorry, but “Obsessed” is a movie that challenges. Ironically, more so than the other major film it opens against: “The Soloist.”
Despite the considerable talents of the its two leads - Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. -- that film looks like the umpteenth telling of the liberal white (although in real life the character he portrays was Hispanic, Downey Jr. has proven he can play any ethnicity) whose life is changed by yet another version of the "magical black man."
Far too saccharine and on-the-nose for me. I'll take social commentary wrapped in the artifice of sexy salt-and-pepper, girl-on-girl action any day.
Comments
kika Says
i cannot believe that you chose Obsessed over an increidible movie like The Soloist. If you would put aside your old fashioned ridiculous racism, wake up we have BLACK president, and look at the story telling and directing of the movies you would see the light. Americans have chosen black, we are changing. And Obama speaks clearly and generic not slang. It's time for black America to embrace the fact that we are all one. So what that there is prejudice, it's all over the world against the neighbor, black, jews, hispanics, catholics, argentinians angainst Mexicans, you name it. But we are the ones that create it by comments like the ones you make. If you don't see it as a cliche, nobody will. You are a voice in the community, be smarter. By the way, I am Hispanic.
soccerboy in LA Says
Dag - I went into reading this ready to hate what you had to say and you STILL beat me down. Easily, I might add. What films in history have a family that "happen to be black?"
That's a short list.
flix4kix Says
Surely there are films with more social and political significance out there than this tired looking silliness. You must have missed a few.
Valencia Roner Says
Great points, John:
However, if you want a Black woman's direct point of view, check out my blog post over at:
http://whyblackwomenareangry.blogspot.com/2009/04/obsessed-real-reason-t...
As much as I love you as a screenwriter and commentator, I'm not quite sure if you could ever get away with saying what I said, the way I said it without significant backlash.
Would love to know what you think. BTW, I'm from L.A. and we do have screenwriting friends in common.
All the best,
Valencia
Spock With A Beard Says
Props for the "Spock-with-a-beard" Jerome Bixby Star Trek reference. And just watching the "Obsessed" trailer with a racially-mixed audience is a jaw-dropping experience. But "Obsessed" seems to depict liberal-on-liberal violence. It's unlikely a "crazy tea bagger" would find herself "hot for the black man," as many suggest racism is the foundation for tea party protests.
Like Robert Downey Jr. in "Soloist," Ali Larter may well view Idris Elba as her own personal "magical black man." Like many well-meaning white liberals (and Hispanics, I suppose), she fails to realize Elba has a life, a family, personal issues of his own. He can't drop everything and help Larter's character sort out her personal bullshit, like Will Smith might have.
So Larter's crazed liberal delusion gets her "pale ass" righteously kicked by Beyoncé, who sounds like a black conservative to me.
rudi Says
We saw the movie on Friday and we all thought it was horrible. No one was clapping in the theater I was in most were complaining very loudly about the money they wasted! I do not think any thing political, etc., has anything to do with it. The movie was just plain awful. Beyonce can sing but if you can not do dramatic work then for god's sake don't! The best actor in the movie was the gentleman, who played her husband. We all wished he had chosen a better film to be in - he was actually good. However, one person can not carry a whole film. Someone else needed to be able to act too. The movie was just really terrible - after a little bit - my friends started praying for someone to just boil a bunny rabbit already. At least that would have added some suspense!
Tuptim Says
Good points regarding "The Soloist" following the 'magical black man' cliches, and the triumph of a middle-class black family taking center stage in a studio feature without a cross-dressing Tyler Perry anywhere in sight.
I must say, however, that your political analogy that aligns Ali Larter, the film's crazy villain, with the Republicans, and the African American couple with what you clearly deem as positive heroes (the Obamas), pretty much toes the cliche Hollywood line.
That's not very "challenging" to audiences, is it?
Justjane Says
Targeted at young men?
The trailer provoked whoops of approval - female - wherever I saw it.
Cribbster Says
I had similar thoughts about "Rob & Big" when it premiered on MTV several years ago. It was the first time I'd ever seen two stars of a reality show -- one white, one black -- and the racial difference was NEVER even mentioned on the show. Ever.
Rebecca Morrell Says
Love it....smart, funny commentary. May actually consider going to see it now....if only because of Idris Elba.
Movieist Says
A better pick for "most significant film of the decade" would be Rachel Getting Married, which has a middle-class black man marrying a middle-class
white woman ... and their color and social status are irrelevant to the story.
They're just two people in love, which is how it should be.