January 15-21, 2004

movies

Artificial Amalgamation

Baby formula: Griffin, Anderson and Imperioli with their newborns.

Cheryl Dunye struggles to inject meaning into the formulaic My Baby's Daddy.

by Cindy Fuchs

My Baby’s Daddy’s high concept has three men and three babies trading reaction shots. That they are hip-hop-flavored homeboys superficially updates their Mr. Mom experiences: Rather than change diapers, shop for formula and attend "Mommy and Me" classes in the suburbs, they’re doing it in the city -- nominally Philadelphia, though mostly shot in Toronto.

An animated opening sequence, narrated by grocery clerk/aspiring boxer G (Anthony Anderson), lays out the situation. Lonnie (Eddie Griffin) is the group's designated Urkel: With big glasses, big teeth, nerdy costumes and affect, he wants to be an inventor and lusts after skanky Rolanda (Paula Jai Parker). Self-imagined stud Dominic (Michael Imperioli) is the hip-hopped-out white boy; he's managing a duo, the Brotha Stylz (Jason and Randy Sklar of MTV's Apt. 2F), who they dump him for a Suge Knight facsimile named Drive By (Tiny Lister).

When Rolanda, Dom's one night stand, Nia (Joanna Bacalso), and G's girl, Xi Xi (Bai Ling), all get pregnant at the same time, the guys are suddenly faced with responsibilities. Though they all live, Old School-style, in a house owned by Lonnie's Uncle Virgil (John Amos, currently starring with Anderson in All About the Andersons), they believe they can be good fathers while also pursuing their vaguely outlined dreams and, most importantly, throwing well-attended parties.

The maturation process is painful, as the new parents reveal ignorance and the film recycles old bits: Rolanda feeds her infant soda in a bottle; Lonnie leads a feeding-and-burping lesson; the men rock the babies to sleep in G's acrobatic lowrider; G's kid pees in his face; and, by way of the requisite shape-up-or-else lesson, the daddies leave the babies unattended while they party downstairs, then profess shock and contrition when the latter are briefly lost.

Working from a multi-authored screenplay (credited to Griffin, Damon Daniels, Brent Goldberg and David Wagner), Philadelphia's Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman, Stranger Inside) struggles to make comedy out of cliches and fart jokes. While she's come a long way from the Dunyementary, the innovative, mostly autobiographical short video format that made her famous in film fest circuits, she's caught in a situation resembling that of formerly independent filmmaker Troy Beyer, whose Love Don't Cost a Thing is also a remake of a white formula film, supposedly enlivened by inserting black characters and a hip-hop-heavy soundtrack. (Various moments of My Baby's Daddy are punctuated by trite soundtrack choices: the crosscut birthing scenes by Salt 'n Pepa's "Push It," solemn lessons learned by Scarface's "On My Block" and G's effort to jog by "Gonna Fly Now.")

It's hardly news that retarded formula comedy -- the sort relying on, say, fart jokes and racial stereotypes -- grants newish filmmakers and actors entrance into "Hollywood": Similar to slasher films, they're by-the-numbers and relatively inexpensive to make, but unlike slashers, they tend to employ medium-name performers (often from TV, music or standup) in order to guarantee some box office, no matter how meager. (That critics were barred at the last minute from advance screenings of My Baby's Daddy suggests Miramax had a sense of just how meager this one's might be.)

Also like Love Don't Cost a Thing, My Baby's Daddy reveals occasional slivers of innovation, as if it's resisting its own fate as a studio-managed muddle: Dom comes to terms with Nia's lesbian relationship with her midwife, Venus (Naomi Gaskin) and performances do briefly rise above the morass (see especially Amos, Bacalso and Marsha Thomason, recent survivor of The Haunted Mansion, as Lonnie's "nice" girlfriend).

But for the most part, the movie is overwhelmed by a mix of formula, stereotypes and inconsistency. G learns that Xi Xi's father and his employer, Cha Ching (Denis Akiyama), is a former gangster with the triads (he smokes reefer and pours out a little from his 40); and Lonnie goes through a corny and tedious "player" phase before he realizes he just has to "be himself" to win the new girlfriend's heart. Not only is the awkward white hip-hopper routine played out, so are jokes about gangstas (as G's cousin, the just out-of-prison Method Man can't help himself, and steals baby supplies), Chinese names (Ca Ching, Ding-a-Ling, Sing-Sing) and pronunciations: On hearing G's protracted penitent speech, Bai Ling is reduced to asserting, "You had me at "Herro.'" Ouch.

Likely, neither Love Don't Cost a Thing nor My Baby's Daddy will mark the end of anyone's career. (Dunye, for one, is reportedly signed to direct a hip-hop film set in N.Y.C.) But such trial-by-fire hardly seems useful for actors, writers or crewmembers. If a filmmaker is signed to work on the basis of previous, independently produced work, it seems logical that this kind of work -- original, challenging -- be encouraged rather than buried beneath industry ennui.

MY BABY’S DADDY

Directed by Cheryl Dunye A Miramax release Now playing at area theaters