CASINO 1995

A Movie Without A Hero

I've no idea if 19th-century English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in any way inspired Martin Scorsese's Casino (screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese from Pileggi's non-fiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas). But I can't imagine the notoriously cynical author of The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) and Vanity Fair (1887) would take issue with my updating the latter's subtitle to headline this essay on Martin Scorsese's mythic epic of misanthropy, Casino; an operatically grandiose fall-from-grace fable lacking in even a single virtuous character.  

Robert De Niro as Sam "Ace" Rothstein

Sharon Stone as Ginger McKenna

Joe Pesci as Nicky Santoro

James Woods as Lester Diamond

Alan King as Andy Stone

Don Rickles as Billy Sherbert

Based on a true story and shot in a lacquered, color-saturated style befitting the over-the-top, tacky opulence of its '70s-era Las Vegas setting, Martin Scorsese's Casino is mobster neo-noir (neon-noir?) on an operatic scale.   

A sprawling, blood-soaked, true-crime chronicle of the days of Mafia-ruled Las Vegas, Casino dramatizes a period in history when Sin City was still a slightly shady, post-Rat Pack, strictly-adults playground (no kid-friendly thrill rides), and the casinos served as the perfect false fronts of legitimacy for the Syndicate's meticulously planned and carried out money-skimming operations. 

As Mob films go, Casino doesn't cover much new ground (especially if you've seen Goodfellas), but as the saying goes, it's not the tale; it's in the telling. 

And from Casino's nearly three-hour running time, ten-year narrative span (1973 to 1983), prodigious body count tally (upwards of 24), and cast of over 100 speaking parts, all sporting more eye-popping retro costumes and hairstyles than a Cher retrospective; the telling is a clear case of form meeting function. Casino is the gangster movie recontextualized as a Paradise Lost parable advocating that you can take the wiseguy out of the mean streets, but you can't take the hood out of the hoodlum.  

The paradox of Las Vegas has always been that it's a city built on games of chance

 that stays profitable by making sure absolutely nothing is left to chance.

Casino kicks off with a (literally) explosive pre-credits sequence that hurls the audience and the just-seconds-old movie into "whodunit" territory with an abruptness of violence we'll come to learn is something of a Casino leitmotif. As an exercise in cinema economy, it's a killer of an opening (heh -heh) that instantly creates tension, disrupts the viewer's equilibrium (you're on guard against the unexpected before you've even had time to develop expectations), and establishes the basis for Casino's told-in-flashback structure and running voiceover narration.

Duel in the Sun

Said voiceover duties are shared (in often amusingly contradictory and self-serving narrative perspectives) by childhood pals Sam "Ace" Rothstein (sports handicapper) and Nicky Santoro (protection racket). A pair of Midwest Mafia golden boys granted (temporarily, as it turns out) the Keys to the Kingdom, and for Ace, an ill-omened stab at absolution through love (enter, traffic-stopping Vegas hustler Ginger McKenna).

For all that I love about Casino—and I am indeed crazy about this flick...exhilarating and ambitious, it's precisely the kind of movie that reminds me why I fell in love with movies in the first place—the main reason it ranks #1 as both my favorite and most re-watched of Scorsese films, is the toxic trio of characters at its center. 

An Ace, A Queen, and A Joker

"It should'a been perfect. I mean, he had me, Nicky Santoro, his best friend, watching his ass. 

And he had Ginger, the woman he loved, on his arm, But in the end, we fucked it all up."

Anyone familiar with this blog is aware that I have a fondness for - as I once described it: "Movies about neurotic characters in mutually dependent relationships, each harboring barely-suppressed hostilities and resentments, yet forced by circumstance to interact" (e.g., Carnage, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Closer, A Delicate Balance). 

So it should come as no surprise that I find the positively electric De Niro-Stone-Pesci/Ace-Ginger-Nicky dynamic of dysfunction the most compelling thing about Casino. No matter how big the film gets, the human scale always towers far above it. Scorsese, the master of the intimate epic, keeps the emotional drama center stage, while the actors somehow pull off the miraculous feat of humanizing these reprehensible characters without glorifying them. 

ROGUES GALLERY
Clockwise from left: Frank Vincent, Kevin Pollak, Dick Smothers, and L.Q. Jones

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

In addition to being fascinated by films about corrosive relationships, I also have a mania for movies about ostensibly "foolproof" schemes that go calamitously wrong (e.g., The Killing -1956, A Simple Plan - 1998, and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - 2007). Perhaps it's because I've always been somewhat allergic to the self-aggrandizing side of the "hero myth" in American movies (one of the main reasons I've never cared for Westerns, war movies, or sports films); or maybe because real-life keeps offering daily confirmation that America's staunchest and most noble institutions are no match for America's simpletons. 

Whatever the reason (and it could be as simple as me relishing the tenets of film noir), I remain captivated by films that dramatize this almost biblical sociopsychological truth: There is no paradise so abundant, answered prayer so fulfilling, utopia so ideal, or technological advancement so life-changing that humans can't ultimately find a way to fuck it up.

Las Vegas as American Metaphor
Devoted to upholding the illusion of fairness while knowing absolutely everything is rigged

Although I liked Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990) a great deal, I'm one of the few (only?) who finds Casino to be the superior film. In melding two of my favorite movie subgenres (dysfunctional relationships/things spiraling out of control), Casino plays less like a gangster film to me and more like a conflict of human nature melodrama. And that's a win.

What's most dramatically compelling to me is how the characters in Casino are handed a Syndicate Shangri-La, yet they can’t get out of the way of their own egos, jealousies, and weaknesses long enough to make it work. In this, Casino has always felt a bit to me like the coin flip-side to Bob Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)…both films share a very late-‘70s, nihilistic sensibility in their attitude towards dreams, dreamers who fly too close to the sun, and the perils of mere mortals thinking they can play fast and loose with The Fates.

"Beautiful title sequence of our lead character falling slowly into hell."

Editor Thelma Schoonmaker on Casino's titles designed by Elaine & Saul Bass 

Religion almost always serves a function in Scorsese's films. Casino's themes reference Christian mythology. Specifically the notion of sin and absolution.   

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Scorsese is such a gifted visual storyteller. Early in Casino, we're treated to an aerial nighttime view of Las Vegas—an isolated, neon-lit island in a vast sea of darkness—that succinctly captures the precise appeal this desert metropolis holds for  Midwest mobsters: no neighbors.

Set smack in the middle of nowhere, Las Vegas is presented as a place apart. A world unto itself. An uncharted frontier where laws (and hands) can be broken, and ordinary rules of behavior simply don't come into play. No wonder Ace Rothstein calls it a gangster's "Paradise on earth."

While voiceover narration informs us that Vegas was wide open for guys like Ace and Nicky, Casino's visuals tell another story. The world of gambling casinos is a darkness-shrouded time/space limbo devoid of clocks or windows, illuminated exclusively by ceilings of neon suns and electric stars. Scorsese's frequent use of low-angle shots makes these ceilings look oppressive and looming, the casinos, closed-in and claustrophobic. Ace and Nicky like to think of themselves as free agents, but with cameras everywhere and the Mob bosses regularly reported-to, they're just two wealth-cocooned street guys living in garish gilded cages. 

With Plenty of Money and You

Scorsese's Las Vegas -an entire city done in exclamation points- is so isolated that it's not just out of touch with the rest of the world; it's out of touch with reality.

Everything from the cinematography (Casino has the sheen and saturated colors of a movie musical), period costuming (the '70s on steroids), and production design (gaudy glitz) to the editing (kid-in-a-candy-store jittery) reinforce a vision of Las Vegas as an oasis of overstatement. 

Sexy Beast

PERFORMANCES 

It's no surprise that De Niro and Pesci are phenomenal. They exhibit the same natural, improvisational intensity and chemistry they shared in Raging Bull and Goodfellas. (Although I confess that getting used to Pesci's voiceover initially took me a while. Nowadays, I delight in Pesci's profanity-laced commentary, but the first time I saw Casino, it felt as though I were trapped listening to an entire film narrated by Fats, that creepy ventriloquist doll in Magic - 1978). 

But Sharon Stone is the real revelation in Casino. Giving the film's only Oscar-nominated performance,  Stone brings it and is not fucking around. She owns that role and slays in every scene. I'll go to my grave saying she was robbed of the Oscar that year (she lost it to Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking). 

Stone gives a career-best performance and damn-near steals the entire movie, inhabiting her character with both a granite toughness and raw vulnerability...her skill in conveying the latter is the very thing that makes the Ace/Ginger scenes work: if we didn't get a glimpse of the "other" Ginger that Ace falls in love with, he would simply come across as a fool. Sharon Stone has so many great moments, but one of my favorites is a scene in a hotel room with Pesci, where he's warning her to be careful around Ace. Her delivery of the line: "I know. You don't have to tell me that. What do you think, I'm stupid?" and the look she gives him as he leaves (She's SO not stupid) just lays me out. Stone is hands-down 75% of why Casino ranks so high on my favorites chart.  

The Happy Couple

When I said that Casino is a story lacking in a single virtuous character, that went double for the city of Las Vegas. The film treats Las Vegas as another character in this drama. A character as bereft of a moral core as any of its flesh-and-blood castmates. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

My favorite directors aren't favorites because I like all of their movies. I've seen nearly every film made by Martin Scorsese; some are dreadful (New York Stories – 1989), some are admirably flawed (New York, New York – 1977), some are unforgettable (Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore – 1974),  and some are even masterpieces (Taxi Driver – 1976). 

What tends to make a filmmaker a favorite is that their love of cinema is so passionate that even their failures are fascinating. 

With Scorsese, I always get the feeling that he respects the power of film and enjoys manipulating the tools of the medium (music, editing, camera angles, production design, costuming, casting, dialogue, story) to create authentic cinema experiences. 

Which means he leaves me to discover what I feel about what I see. He trusts me to do the work to interpret the unorthodox and risky. He understands that movies are about that magical exchange between the emotion of the story, the impact of the screen images, and the relationship forged with the viewer. Scorsese is a storyteller, and the obvious delight he takes in crafting a tale and bringing me into his world is as infectious as it is intoxicating. 

So, on that score, Martin Scorsese is not one of those directors I can always count on to deliver a movie that I'm sure to love, but he's a director I definitely trust to deliver a movie that's about something human and real.

Though not very well-received when released, Casino, nevertheless, more than any other film he's made, embodies what I most love about movies and represents what I've come to most respect and admire in Martin Scorsese as an artist and a filmmaker. 

CASINO opened in Los Angeles on Wednesday, November 22, 1995
I saw it that following Saturday at Mann's Plaza Theater in Westwood 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2023

BOOMERANG 1992

Reversal of a Dog

Boomerang is one of my all-time favorite romantic comedies. Time has rendered its already-remarkable cast of Black actors a once-in-a-lifetime assemblage, but the film itself is genuinely hilarious and its premise so irresistible, I’m surprised it hasn't been used before (or perhaps it had, only I've failed to come across it).
A callous, commitment-phobic, career-Casanova named Marcus Graham (dashing ad executive Eddie Murphy, ever on the lookout for perfection) suffers an ironic moment of reckoning when, after finally falling in love, he has the tables turned on him. The woman who sweeps him off his feet is Jacqueline Broyer (the elegant Robin Givens), a confident, flattery-immune executive (his new boss, in fact) possessed of effortless self-assurance and plenty of game of her own. A woman who, when it comes to artfully playing the field and displaying a mastery of the game of love-'em-and-leave-'em, proves in every way to be Marcus' match and “dog” doppelgänger.  

Eddie Murphy as Marcus Graham

Robin Givens as Jacqueline Broyer

Halle Berry as Angela "Agatha" Lewis

Grace Jones as Helen Strange (pronounced Strawn-J)

Eartha Kitt as Lady Eloise

I was instantly reminded of just why Boomerang’s premise so intrigued me when, while prepping this essay, my search for a laudatory, non-judgmental, non-pejorative term for the female equivalent of a Casanova or ladies’ man took me through Thesaurus Hell and back; there really isn't one. The appeal of the so-called charming womanizer has always been lost on be, yet the pop-cultural cult of the loveable lothario has left us with countless variations on admiration-laced labels like Romeo, playboy, and roué. But our culture’s rigid gender double standards have made no such allowances for women.
The only terms I came across for a woman who enjoys playing the sexual field are words reflecting the male gaze (i.e., seductress, temptress), your common vulgar epithets, or words that suggest they evolved out of fear of female sexuality (vamp, siren). I guess that leaves only the second-hand, non-partisan “playgirl.” 

Marcus, a serial girl-watcher, gets a taste of what it's like from the other side
when he becomes the objectified, sexualized subject of Jacqueline's dominant gaze

I was too young for the golden age of the romantic comedy. The days of Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck...back when Hays Code censorship necessitated the emphasis on “romance” and chemistry in lieu of demonstrative expressions of sexual attraction. I did, however, grow up in the ‘60s: the era of The Kinsey Report, the sexual revolution, and the heyday of the noxious "swinging playboy" stereotype (think Pal Joey-era Frank Sinatra and his ring-a-ding-ding Rat Pack). Goodbye, witty romantic comedies, hello, crass sex farce. A tiresome formula that presupposed men and women as combatants in formulaic Battle of the Sexes roundelays that all seemed to be about fuck-anything-that-moves bachelors out to trick superannuated virgins into bed before said conquest could trick them into marriage. 

Lela Rochon as Christie, a dog-lover who's also susceptible to dogs of the two-legged variety

Come the '70s, the chase-the-secretary-around-the-desk ‘60s womanizer was reimagined as the free-love hippie hedonist (The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart -1970) or the self-appointed soldier on the frontlines of the sexual revolution (Shampoo - 1975). In the '80s, man-boys replaced grown men in the rom-com landscape (Skin Deep -1989), every story now a variation on the arrested development Peter Pan being chased by a finger-wagging, killjoy Wendy. Mid-decade it became clear that the traditional sexual politics of the romantic comedy would have to change to accommodate women's more progressive, evolved gender status. Hollywood met the challenge by eliminating women from the equation entirely: hello, the Bromantic Comedy. 

Yes, those paying attention at the time recognized that the only real rom-coms being made were male-male romances disguised as buddy pictures: e.g., Eddie Murphy’s 48 Hrs (1982) and Lethal Weapon (1987).

Angela: "She's fantastic!  I mean, if I were a guy, I would probably be interested in Jacqueline"

The Good Girl vs Bad Girl Myth

Gender stereotypes mandate that women must always be perceived to be in competition. Angela and Jacqueline are neither rivals nor embodiments of the "good girl vs. bad girl" trope. (Boomerang ascribes no stronger moral failing to Jacqueline's choices than it's also willing to ascribe to Marcus'.) Like the female friends portrayed by Goldie Hawn and Julie Christie in Shampoo, Angela and Jacqueline's dynamic is simply two friends who are after different things from the same man.

The 1990s represented a boom era in Black Cinema. The start of the decade saw the release of films like To Sleep With Anger, Boyz in the Hood, Mo’ Better Blues, New Jack City, and A Rage In Harlem. Films that had me harkening back to the Black Film Explosion of the ‘70s--when, regardless of content or quality, the press insisted on labeling every single film with a Black cast “Blaxploitation.” The '90s boom produced a wide array of films, and amongst the youth-centric comedies and heavy dramas, Boomerang provided some much-needed old-style sophistication, glamour, romance, and escapism.

Geoffrey Holder as "Nasty" Nelson

Originally (and clumsily) titled Playboy Falls into Love, Boomerang came along at just the right time for me. I’d long ago made peace with rom-coms being “all hetero, all the time” (a treaty I’ve since broken), but such egalitarian magnanimity didn’t extend to rom-coms' “all white couples, all the time” view of love. Black couples in romantic comedies were conspicuous by their absence. When Boomerang came along, For Love of Ivy (1968) and Claudine (1974) were the only rom-coms on my favorites list that were about Black couples. And look at how far back we're talking! 

It’s as though Hollywood’s narrow-end-of-the-telescope insistence on filtering everything through a white narrative lens had reduced the entirety of Black experience to stories about race-based trauma. I imagined industry green-lighters found it inconceivable that Black people could laugh, meet cute, fall in love, break up, reconcile, and live happily ever after.

Marcus has a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that the "model" he has been hitting on is actually the company's new Chief of Marketing. The very job he thought was assured to him after sleeping with the company's figurehead, Lady Eloise (Eartha Kitt)

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I’ve always felt the title Boomerang only half refers to the karmic reversal Marcus Graham’s love life undergoes in the course of the film. Boomerang is also a fair description of what lies in store for unsuspecting rom-com audiences confronted with the well-worn clichés of the genre subverted along lines of gender, race, and class.

I respond to Boomerang as I do the ‘70s comedies of Mel Brooks—it’s the ensemble contributions of the talented cast that make the film so funny, rather than any particular performance. (Although I could look at an edit reel of Grace Jones’ scenes exclusively and be in heaven. She’s that terrific.)

Martin Lawrence as Tyler, David Alan Grier as Gerard
Lawrence’s relentlessly “woke” character is essentially Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, who saw antisemitism in everything (“No, not ‘did you eat,’ but ‘Jew eat?’ You get it? Jew eat!” )

Mel Brooks breathed new life into classic film genres like the western (Blazing Saddles) and the horror film (Young Frankenstein) by infusing them with a contemporary, scatological comic sensibility. 

The Black Experience is so rarely depicted in movies that all Boomerang had to do to revitalize the romantic comedy was to de-centralize the white gaze. Suddenly, long-familiar situations, characters, and narrative devices felt fresh because of the simple fact then when you change the storyteller, you change the story. Boomerang presented the Black experience as it's lived by those living it, not by how it's seen and interpreted from the outside. It felt liberating to see Black characters humanized, with all the diverse shades of funny, vulnerable, intelligent, ambitious, sensitive, shallow, sexy, outrageous, glamorous...and yes, raunchy. But in a context lacking in response or reaction to the white gaze.

Bebe Drake and the late John Witherspoon are comedy gold as 
Mrs. & Mr. Jackson, Gerard's country-ass parents 

In trying to think of other "give him a taste of his own medicine" comedies, all I was able to come up with were two. Some Like It Hot (1959), in which two skirt-chasing musicians wear skirts themselves and learn what it's like to be on the receiving end of lecherous male advances. And Goodbye Charlie (1964) has a womanizer being shot by a jealous husband, only to come back reincarnated as a woman and having to fend off men like much like his former self. 
Leaving behind such farcical extremes, Boomerang is essentially a sex comedy of manners that has fun skewering traditional gender roles, double standards, and rom-com conventions.

Now the plot gets thick, Mr. Unplayable’s about to catch the short end of the stick. *

Waiting by the Phone

Taken for Granted

Woman on Top 

Seduced and Abandoned

It’s kinda like a boomerang; what you put out comes back to ya, it’s the same old thing. *

       *song "What Comes Around Goes Around" by Kid Sensation - 1995

PERFORMANCES
To anyone who knows me, it should come as no surprise when I assert that for me, the women are the chief attraction and saving graces of Boomerang...especially Grace Jones. It's also rare to see s many women with significant roles in one film. Best of all, they are all so dynamic, charming, funny, and charismatic, they succeed in smoothing out the rough edges attendant with my mixed feelings about the often problematic Eddie Murphy (who, to his credit, in an almost completely reactive role, is actually quite likable here.)

To have Grace Jones, Robin Givens, Halle Berry, Eartha Kitt, Tisha Campbell, and Lena Rochon all in the same movie is some kind of Essence magazine/Ebony Fashion Fair glam wish come true. They're really the film's most valuable players. So good, in fact,  that I found myself wishing the guys would all fade into the background and that Boomerang would morph into a hip update of Valley of the Dolls with Eartha Kitt as Helen Lawson, Halle Berry as Neely, Robin Givens as Anne, and Lena Rochon as Jennifer. Grace Jones could play any role she wanted.

"My role involved taking off my knickers in public, rubbing them in people's faces, chasing the pants off Eddie, and saying the word 'pussy' a lot with an accent that is from nowhere on Earth. ...I have no idea why they thought of me for the role."
Grace Jones being cheeky in her 2015 memoir I'll Never Write My Memoirs

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

On television recently I saw Oscar-winning screen icon Cicely Tyson relate a story about doing promotion for her 1972 film Sounder and having a white member of the press tell her that the film (about a Black family of sharecroppers in 1933 Louisiana) forced him to confront bigotry within himself because he had a hard time accepting the son in the story (Robert Hooks) calling his father (Paul Winfield) “Daddy.”

Yes, a Black character displaying basic, unremarkable humanity was enough to strain credibility for this man. And while I’m certain this story will leave some people feeling all warm and fuzzy because a Black film led a white man to recognize his prejudices, Tyson recognized it for what it was; a sign of the vast chasm existing between the reality of Black life and white culture’s perception of it. The phenomenon is so common it's been given a name--the Racial Empathy Gap, citing the difficulty white audiences often have in relating to Black characters in films. Cicely Tyson went on to say “That’s when I realized I could not afford the luxury of being an actress. There were some issues that I wanted to address. That I would use my career as my platform.”  

Black film - White Gaze Microaggressions
In 1992 this scene in a men's clothing store where a sales clerk assumes Marcus and his friends are unable to afford the merchandise was criticized for being a burlesque of racism. With the proliferation of cell phones, we now know the broadly-played scene was an exercise in subtlety compared to the reality.

And indeed, it has been the eternal legacy of Black artists in film to take up the mantle and use their artistic careers as platforms to combat Black invisibility and present the world with images of dignity to counter generations of racist dehumanization. But as author Toni Morrison so eloquently wrote and spoke about, the constant need to frame Black life in ways understandable, acceptable, and appeasing to white audiences not only seriously restricts the free, authentic expression of Black experience, but in the end only reinforces the false dominance of the white perspective.

Spike Lee's pioneering films broadened the scope of what Black films looked like, paving the way for the Hudlin Brothers' Black business world setting of Boomerang (which in real-life inspired the creation of the Marcus Graham Project - a nonprofit dedicated to inclusion in the fields of advertising and marketing).

Father of the Black Film explosion of the 1970s, legendary filmmaker
Melvin Van Peebles appears as a film editor

One of the things I don’t think Boomerang gets enough credit for is being a Black film that doesn’t center and prioritize whiteness. Unapologetically uninterested in the white gaze, Boomerang is set in a Black corporate world so alien and underrepresented on the screen that it strained credibility for many white viewers at the time (the only way some could process it at all was to convince themselves it was a fantasy). Boomerang is Black representation that's funny, funky, sexy, loving, and outrageous enough to be comfortable in its own skin. It foregoes the traditional crossover concerns of respectability politics, uplift roadmaps, and cultural identification signposts.

Director Reginald Hudlin (l.) and producer Warrington Hudlin appear as a couple
of street hustlers soliciting Marcus outside of the Apollo Theater. 

Based on a story idea by Eddie Murphy, Boomerang's screenplay is credited to SNL alumni and longtime Murphy collaborators Barry Blaustein & David Sheffield. In the 2003 book Why We Make Movies: Black Filmmakers Talk About the Magic of Cinema by George Alexander, producer Warrington Hudlin called the duo: "Two white writers who are on Hollywood welfare rolls who just keep getting money with no talent." Labeling the original screenplay for Boomerang "worthless," Hudlin credits the film's Black perspective as emanating from Murphy's original story and the widely-encouraged improvisational skills of the cast. 

It was nothing short of exhilarating for me to see myself and people I recognized in the film’s casual intersection of buppies & homies; hip-hop and R &B; urban sophisticates and “country” relatives; women in charge & sex-positivity feminism; Afrocentrism and Dolemite-level raunch.

I saw Boomerang on opening day July, 1^st, 1992 with a friend of mine (now, ex-friend) who found the film profoundly insulting because she felt the absence of white characters in the film was an act of intentional hostility on the part of the filmmakers. Mind you, this was a white friend with whom I’d watched innumerable classic and contemporary movies with all-white casts with nary a peep out of her. Exposure to just ONE film with a prioritized Black gaze was enough to send her off the rails.

Tisha Campbell as Yvonne

Boomerang is killingly funny and ranks high on my absolute favorites chart, but it’s far from being a perfect film. I love how prominently women feature in the narrative and I’ve not one complaint with how they are characterized or depicted in the film (but I say that with the awareness that the almost 30-year-old film is the collaborative work of men, and that as a male myself, I am hardly the last word on the subject). But I personally could do without Eddie Murphy’s incessant need to assert his well-documented—since apologized for—homophobia (Good Lord…the man can’t even let a Frenchman platonically kiss him on the cheek!), and the scenes between Marcus and his buddies grow more cringe-worthy with each passing year (they trigger a lifetime’s memories of having to suffer the toxic masculinity byplay of barbershop talk).

Chris Rock as corporate gossip, Bony T

What lingers with me and what makes me understand how Boomerang has grown into a classic and cult favorite is that it’s a glimmering time capsule of Black culture, highlighting a vast cross-section of amazing Black artists. As a film, it’s a little piece of comic brilliance that shows its age in some respects but largely reveals how ahead of the curve it was in defining its point of view and depicting a side of Black life rarely seen on movie screens. The rare entertainment that succeeds in actually being entertaining, I champion Boomerang for its humor, its heart, its raunchy outrageousness, and especially for its refreshing vision of romance and Black lives lived in a glossy, stylishly old-fashioned Hollywood landscape.

And I Will Give U My Heart

BONUS MATERIAL

With eight weeks in the #1 spot on the R&B charts, the Boomerang soundtrack was a massive hit, with singles flooding the radio airwaves of 1992. To this day my personal fave track remains Grace Jones' "7 Day Weekend," A song that only appears instrumentally in the movie and for which Jones expressed little fondness in her memoirs, citing minimal creative input.

Boomerang introduced me to the magnificent work of African-American artist Romare Bearden (1911-1988). The above piece "Jammin ' at the Savoy" -1980, is featured in the scene where Angela teaches a children's art class.

Boomerang spawned a 2019 spin-off TV series produced by Halle Berry and written by Lena Waithe that ran for two seasons on BET. The show took place in modern-day Atlanta and had the adult daughter of Eddie Murphy & Halle Berry running her own advertising agency while being romantically pursued by the son of Robin Givens' character. The reversal of the premise had Marcus and Angela's daughter as the one afraid of commitment, while Jacqueline's son is the one looking to settle down.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2020