Whiteboyz

As I read reviews of this movie I just can't keep feeling like most of you just don't get it. I'm reading comments here on IMDb like "white boys trying to act like they are black (c'mon that is terrible)" or "can someone say Wigger...". You are missing the point. This movie is simply one big satire of young white teenagers who grow up in decent or rich environment (or Iowa) idolizing the ghetto life that they see on MTV and trying to mimic it. As a product of a large city public school system in the mid nineties I saw these kinds of kids every day. It's pretty depressing actually. Low self-esteem kids with terrible identity disorders trying so desperately to find themselves. Or not? Maybe most of them just don't know how to act. Whatever it is I'd have to say that this movie was on point with every aspect of this kind of lifestyle. For someone like me, who went to school with kids like this, Whiteboyz is a hilarious movie! Flip dog is just so incredibly lost in his gangster world, working out scenarios with Khalid before his talks to him, rapping in front of the mirror, etc. Khalid even tries to explain this to Flip and Flip is so lost he just doesn't understand what he is telling him. Khalid was probably the most normal kid in the movie. He respected his Mom, he has aspirations to go to college, and wasn't all about getting in trouble. What was the most revealing about what this movie was trying to do was the scene where James comes out of his "gangster" act and starts ranting racial slurs. Did James have multiple personalities? No. How could you miss the point after seeing that? There are plenty of people I'd like to show this movie to but sadly they won't get it. It's definitely one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. It was acted out perfectly and just down right hilarious. Unfortunately, most of the people just don't get it. Recommended as a wake up call to all you gangster white boys out there that grew up in a stable home. Cheers!

Someone needed to make a movie like this, a commentary on how white suburban teenagers have latched onto hip-hop and "ghetto" culture, and made it part of their identity, when in reality they don't have a solitary clue of what it means to be Black in America. Someone needed to make a movie that made the point that white America's affinity for Black culture rarely translates into actual understanding of Black people as actual human beings, or into an understanding of their situation. Someone needed to make a movie that showed hip-hop-as-consumed-by-white-kids as what it is: a new version of a very old theme in American popular culture -- the Black man as dirty savage, cunning and dangerous, yet stupid and witless at the same time.

But "Whiteboys" is not this movie. The movie can't seem to decide if it's a comedy or a cutting social commentary, or both. So it fails as both. The central problem is that the main characters are stereotypes themselves, the East Coast-imagined version of what someone in Iowa is supposed to be like. It's impossible to believe that Flip and his gang are for real. Flip especially comes off as a delusional mental patient, not as a misguided, out-of-touch kid. The images of farm life were as cartoonish as the images of hip hop life the movie was mocking. Perhaps this was part of the point, but all of the overlapping of targets of parody just made the whole matter confusing.

The movie would have been much better off if had ditched the whole Iowa-farmer theme, stopped reveling in stupid images of kids rapping in farm fields, and instead focused on a group of kids in Any-Suburb USA, the kind of kids that we all have met -- privileged white kids who are drawn to the false glamor of ghetto life presented on TV, utterly oblivious to their own privileged station in life.

i can understand why the makers of this film would want to exaggerate the situation, but i didn't think it need to be set in Iowa. as previous users have mentioned, Iowa is not drug- and black-free, but its image is of wholesome, all-white nostalgia. i didn't really buy Danny Hoch's Flip as an Iowa native, he still sounds too Brooklyn. i think it would have been better if it taken place in Jersey, but i understand the director's desire to show just how far Flip stretches.

That said, i think it's a brilliant, if flawed, movie. it spends a bit too much time watching Flip do his misguided thing, before getting to the climax in Cabrini-Green. Hoch is great at affecting that 'what the hell is going on?' look, and tho this may sound weird, he doesn't overplay the character, except when he's in full blown hip hop mode. other than that his character is completely believable. he nails that character so well, the guy we've all known who has some idea in his head so large he can't hear anything else. Until he takes it too far.

I get the feeling that this film might've been advertised as a comedy, but yes, it does border on some serious issues that should be acknowledged.

Still, there are several scenes in WHITEBOYS that had me busting up, most notably Flip's daydreaming sequences, which has him imagining about being accepted by urban thugs just because he's "down" with hip-hop.

Overall,I ended up being impressed by this film. Well acted, well written, and well filmed. I would'nt mind catching it again!

Being from Iowa, I am usually offended by stereotypical portrayals of Iowans as dumb farmers, oblivious to the real world. That said, I really liked this movie. Part of it is the fun of seeing familiar places and landmarks (bridges, bars, cop cars, local personalities), but I also was intrigued by the story.

Most reviews I've read about this movie criticize the makers for trying to run on one joke for 90 minutes. Instead, I think the audience laughs because the characters (especially Flip) are trying so pitifully hard. Flip is like any teenager (in Iowa or elsewhere) who's searching for his spot in the world. He doesn't like his life (what teenager does?) and he is drawn to the "idea" of the ghetto he gets from music videos. His fantasies are so opposite from what he knows -wealth, women, recognition. In his fantasy world, everyone fits into the slots he gives them with no questions. The problem is he can't separate his fantasy from reality, and when reality slaps him in the face (Chicago) he is forced to take a look at who he really is - a faulted, bigoted, everyday person.

It's hard to face our faults, and the filmmakers must use an exaggerated character with exaggerated actions in an extreme situation to make this seem less like a cheesy story about some loser wannabes with no clue and more like a paradoxical look at facing ourselves. Without this movie's extreme and often sad backdrop, I would write it off as another "we're more cultured than you, aren't Iowans dumb" story. Instead, I think this is a smart, biting story that challenges us to take a look past what we want everyone else to see and examine who we are underneath, faults and all.