"Poetic Justice"
                        A film review by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister
                       "The Women's Show"
                     WMNF-FM, Tampa, Florida
                          July 24, 1993

     There have been several films this summer whose central
character has been a contemporary African American woman, among
them "Just Another Girl on the IRT," "What's Love Got To Do With
It," and now "Poetic Justice" written and directed by the young
(still in his '20s) filmmaker who brought us "Boyz 'n the Hood" in
`1991, John Singleton.   Of the three, this is my least favorite
because it is so clearly about an African American women as seen
through they eyes of a Black man, with numbers of fetishized shots
of women's bodies and camera angles clearly aimed at giving the
brothers a little charge.  Furthermore (though this may be an
accurate depiction of how some Black men from the inner city tend
to be) the level of routine misogyny displayed by male characters
in this film is staggering. Women are uniformly "bitches" or "hos"
and in the one scene in which the lead character, Justice (played
by Janet Jackson), objects that she is a Black woman and deserves
respect she is branded with an even worse insult, the f-word,
"feminist."   The other f-word, by the way, is by far the most
frequently used word in the screenplay and becomes exceedingly
tiresome after a while, though again, I don't doubt that it might
be the way these characters would talk, but it along with a sex
scene or two and some violence, including violence against women,
earned this film an R rating.  It's not for kids.

   The poetic Justice of the title is a young woman named Justice
(the origin of the name is finally explained) who writes poetry
(Maya Angelou poetry, actually.   Though it doesn't seem to be
Angelou at her poetic best, but it's hard to really attend to it in
the film where it is read in voice-over mode by Jackson in a kind
of sweet but vapid manner).  Pretty much everything about Jackson's
performance is sweet but vapid.  The woman cannot act so she poses
opaquely and her entire performance seems to be right on the
surface--as if she's been told by the director to go through a
certain sequence of motions and facial expressions, but you have a
sense that they're not connected to any of her genuine emotions or
thoughts. Once in a great while, usually when something warm or
funny happens, there's a sense of a fleeting moment of real
connection among the actors, but these moments are few and far
between.

    There's little plot.  Justice, who lives alone and works as a
hairdresser in the Crenshaw district of South Central LA, was in
the car when her boyfriend was shot.  She is in mourning and is
loathe to get involved with another man.  The mailman at the beauty
shop (played by rapper Tupac Shakur) comes on to her but with the help
of the woman who owns the salon (Tyra Ferrell) she suggests to him
she's not interested in men and he leaves in disgust.  When her
friend Simone (Khandi Alexander) convinces her to ride along with
her mailman boyfriend and his friend in the truck as they make
a mail run to Oakland, she reluctantly agrees.  Naturally the
friend turns out to be the same mailman she'd recently put down
whose name is Lucky (and whom the audience already know is a decent guy
with a steady job who has taken over the care of his four-year-old
daughter and has ambitions to do something in the rap music world).
The climate is chilly in the cab of the truck for a while. On the way
they encounter a big African American family reunion (at which
Maya Angelou turns up as Aunt June--preaching, this time, instead
of poeticizing) and an African heritage cultural fair.  You can
figure out the rest of the plot.

   John Singleton has not, with this film, given us a sequel that's
up to the level of his debut film "Boyz 'n the Hood."  But thanks
to the success of that earlier film he now commands the resources
to get this film made and distributed by a major studio like
Columbia so it gets wide distribution in mainstream houses,
something the far superior "Just Another Girl on the IRT" couldn't
get.  Still, the audience to whom this film is addressed--it's a
date film for young Black adults--were out in force to see it
yesterday and seemed to enjoy it quite a lot.

    For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on
Women and Film.


Copyright 1993 by Linda Lopez McAlister.  No portion of this review
may be reproduced or reprinted without the permission of the
author.