Baby Boy
© James C. Hess
Why is it when Spike Lee makes a film or movie of late I am immediately turned off but when John Singleton directs a cinematic effort I am intrigued, despite the blatant heavy-handedness found in both?
It goes to, I suppose, one thing:
Talent.
Singleton has it. Lee doesn't.
John Singleton's latest film, "Baby Boy", is an undeniable preachy work. A heavy-handed condemnation of adultery and bastard children, committed, specifically, by young black men who sire child after child without self-restraint, who make no effort to support their offspring, instead living off relatives until such time they are driven to crime and law-breaking. It is an unflinching examination of the society that allows this, that encourages and effectively demands this of black men today, and then seems to condemn itself for allowing such a subject to even exist.
Yet, there is something here, something not quite quantifiable that causes Singleton's work, again and again, to transcend Political Correctness, victimology, and the angry mode directors the likes of Spike Lee have shoe-horned themselves into.
That something is Talent. Talent that refuses to cower and bend to liberalism and other socio-political nonsense.
In the beginning of "Baby Boy" we are introduced to Jody (Tyrese Gibson), a 20-year-old who has two children by two women. Adult behavior, this. But Jody is hardly an adult: He lives in his room in his mother's house, and when his girlfriend, Yvette (Taraji P. Henson) has an abortion (his?) he hesitates to drive her home. But when she allows him use of her car he drives her home, only so he can take the car and visit his other girlfriend, Peanut (Tamara Bass).
About a decade ago (as I write this) John Singleton made a name for himself as a filmmaker with the bare-knuckle "Boyz N the Hood ". With "Baby Boy" he returns to this tale, and continues the legacy it caused through its characters.
Like "Boyz N the Hood " "Baby Boy" offers no easy answers, no quick outs. Although the situation at hand is black and white (no pun intended), there is nothing here that offers simplicity as solution: When Jody's mother, Juanita (A.J. Johnson) blames him for the situation he finds himself in she does so correctly and rightly. He should grow up, he is told again and again. Get a job, and be a proper caretaker of the family he has created through his own actions.
Like so many today Jody has no answer, no acceptable response to this. Instead, he tries to lay blame on others while continuing the lifestyle he perpetuates, that society allows him to perpetuate.
