In a recurring sketch, Rock would interview Pootie, played with deadpan intensity by Lance Crouther, as he would any of his celebrity guests. However, unlike ‘Lil Kim or Johnnie Cochran, Pootie would respond to Rock’s line of questioning with a stream of incomprehensible gibberish. Rock: “How’s the new album coming?” Pootie: “Sipi-tai! I’m gonna sine it pitty on the runny kine.” It was a consistent highlight of a consistently hilarious show, a subtle but side-splitting send-up of self-involved black music celebrities and star adulation in general.
Given the satirical brilliance of these sketches (as well as the movie’s TV ad campaign in which Pootie is interviewed on a show similar to Bravo’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio”), you can imagine the level of my disappointment upon actually seeing “Pootie Tang,” a film that rivals “The Ladies Man” (2000) as perhaps the most unfunny TV-comedy-sketch-derived feature film of all time.
In the movie, Pootie battles a corporate big wig (Robert Vaughn?!) bent on using Pootie’s image and namesake to sell harmful products to children. Framing this struggle between good and evil are scenes of Pootie’s formative years with his dad, played by Rock; an inexplicable Missy Elliot-Pootie duet, and numerous fights in which Pootie battles slimy thugs with his magic belt (don’t ask).
There are a few moments of inspired absurdity-Pootie releases a single consisting of dead air, which subsequently becomes a smash hit. And Wanda Sykes, a standout on Rock’s HBO show and his recent star vehicle “Down to Earth,” is great as Biggie Shorty, the only woman who’s woman enough to tame Pootie. However, ultimately like many a film based on a TV sketch character, there’s not much after the one-note jokes wear thin. Even more absurd, the plot barely makes use of the gibberish talk conceit that made Pootie so funny in the first place.
Perhaps most saddening of all is that “Pootie Tang” is yet another in a series of shoddy films to feature Chris Rock’s name in some way or another (along with costarring, he helped produce the film). Despite his somewhat solid turn as a hitman in last year’s “Nurse Betty,” the handful of movies in which Rock’s been involved since his breakthrough 1996 special “Bring the Pain” have paled in comparison to his stand-up and TV work. Hopefully, if “Pootie Tang” fails at the box office, Rock will be forced to re-evaluate his film career and begin to find projects that make better use of his comic skills.
Heaven forbid he go the way of his idol Eddie Murphy, a formerly caustic wit who can now be seen at your local multiplex playing straight man to talking bears.
