They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
Damn…
It’s on the top 10 list for Netflix at the moment. It’s got a couple of actors I recognize the names off. It promises laughs, and clones. Upon the choices of flicks I laid out for tonight, this one was the winner of the poll, the champion of the pile - and it never really hurts to figure out what everyone else is watching, so let’s get on in to the movie with such a catchy tagline as “Damn…” - for tonight, They Cloned Tyrone.
Our story starts off simple enough - a rough neighborhood full of drug dealers and pimps going about their daily activities. A little snitcher snitches on someone moving in on the main characters turf - so he hits him with a car to make a point. Later on in the day, he goes to visit the pimp working for him since he’s a little short up on the money collections this time around, and one of the pimp’s ladies is looking to get out of the business. After wrapping things up, our main goes to leave - and promptly gets shot up by the man he hit with his car and his leader. The next day rolls around, and our main wakes up in his bed, goes about his day in a very familiar way, and goes to get the money he hasn’t gotten from Slick, who has a very strange reaction when he gets there. See, Slick remembers him getting shot, and to prove the situation they go to find Yo-Yo, as surely she heard that stuff considering she left a little while before it went down. Well, not one to let people off for gunning him down, his attempts to track things down end up throwing all three of them in over there heads with a secret underground lab that disappears by the next day, and a whole heck of a lot of conspiracy.
It’s a wacky plot. For all of it’s time’s being grounded in at the very least a theoretical level of reality, it really needs some actors to keep it from spiraling straight out of control into just Looney Tunes as live action. At times, the actors are going to get to be a bit “elevated” lets call it - but considering some of the stuff that starts going on in the long run it doesn’t ever really feel wrong. There some emotional parts, there’s some generic parts, there’s some crazy parts - and the actors are all doing a good job with all of them. That being said, what the actor has to work with doesn’t always really get a whole lot of depth, particularly with the side characters, but at least our main three get to have various moments to flex some acting chops regardless of how stereotypical or outrageous that moment might be.
The characters are likewise a mix bag as you may have guessed from what I just mentioned. Main characters get plenty of room for arcs amongst themselves - coming to terms with things, developing as not just a character but as a person, and otherwise ending the movie in a different place than they started in without feeling like it was out of nowhere or forced. The razor-focused view of the location the movie has in it’s eye doesn’t really provide for a wealth of reach between the characters - they are all in that low-tier assumed living situation, where drugs are right around the corner and ladies of the night are hawking their goods right over on the corner. It let’s the story be more focused in and helps provide for better contrast by the final act, but it does give everything a somewhat almost retro feel - but of course, I’m also not in the kind of neighborhood where neighbors houses practically touch your own - unless we are counting cows as people - so the best reference I have to such places is older flicks where hookers and drugs are everywhere as opposed to the theoretical modern times of most of that stuff being a bit more hidden. That said, the movie actually gives a reason for all of these character archetypes to exist in the manner they are, and it also all plays rather well into the more “thinking persons” realm that I usually stay out of.
Where’d you put my case dude?
Although it’s got a science fiction tag on it, this thing isn’t one of those space faring super high tech deals, so the costumes aren’t anything to outstanding from the realm of “appropriate for what it’s aiming for.” It doesn’t impress because of it, but you don’t feel like anything is usually out of place - mind you, i still feel like it looks more retro than entirely modern, but I don’t think that’s on accident and I’m not in touch enough with cities and well-populated suburbs to have any inkling of what fashion looks like - I just assume that pimp isn’t the modern stage-strutter. When we do get the sci fi elements coming in - usually in terms of sets and the props that decorate them, things look quite well. I think I can best suit it up as everything looks like I feel was intended - clean lab filled with science stuff and possibly cocaine, fancy card readers at times, but very modern and retro-modern tech elsewhere. It’s a nice mix, and leaves room for surprises and interesting things to look at outside of the normal day-to-day of streets, homes and churches.
I think one of my favorite parts about this one is the music. Although some of it really does tie into the movie and what it’s doing, a good deal of it is just some nice funk music and well used vocal lines to add to whats happening in the scenes. The balance is largely good, but there’s some lines that are going to probably slip by your ears without the subtitles on - are they important to the plot? No - but if it’s there I feel i should point it out a bit. Language usages isn’t exactly something you’d want the younger ones listening too, but considering the hookers and some of those fake-sex (like, legit fake in the movie, not just faked for a rating sort of thing), the gun violence, drug references, and one of the main characters being a pimp I’m sure there’s a decent number of other reasons people wouldn’t want just any kid to be watching this one. Rating probably would have been the first hint there, but you know how it is! The rest of the effects works is fine looking stuff, so no real complaints there.
Now, this is where I do that thing. You know, where I point out to you that I don’t really think that much watching movies, and you should probably find someone else if you are looking for that. There’s a lot of commentary one could probably pull out of this - conspiracies, gang life, sex life, how far is to far for the greater good, and all sorts of stuff on being black and the implications of how society interacts and views you for being such. It’s there, and someone whose not me would be better equipped to read into it - but it’s not exactly like some of this stuff isn’t pretty obvious at a top level, so I’d wager it’d be pretty hard to come out of the movie not at least recognizing a few levels of it. There’s also some language that I wouldn’t be able to repeat in this movie, even though some of it is attached to some decent jokes. The humor itself will always be dependent on person preferences - for example if they squeezed in a fart joke in an elevator I probably would have laughed my butt off, but other people are a bit to high-brow for that kind of low hanging fruit. They don’t have that in this one, but they do have some good jokes in there that tie in to good line delivery or just overall situations and what happens in them.
Scooby gang chasing those mysteries.
This was a fun movie. It wasn’t honestly entirely what I though it would be going in, but it’s probably better off for it anyways. It had some good acting, some fun turns, a bunch of paper-work for the thoughtful types, and some good music. Openly will admit this won’t be for everyone - nothing really is - and at times it can feel a little bit slow, or way more serious than you thought something labeled comedy would be. In the end though, there was some laughs and some fun times, so I’d call it a good enough movie in my book - and I love a bunch of the references they make throughout the movie too, so I was rather good for most of my ride, wondering how it was going to play out or seeing what they main gang would get into next searching for answers.