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Baadasssss!
The Father And Son Reunion

Starring: Mario Van Peebles, Ossie Davis, David Alan Grier, Nia Long, Paul Rodriguez, Joy Bryant, Adam West
Director: Mario Van Peebles

Reviewed by P. Joshua Laskey

With Baadasssss!, director and star Mario van Peebles has created a tribute to his father Melvin, director, writer, and star of the 1971 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, but it is a strange tribute. What is strange is that the movie does not burnish the image of the original rebel nor does it polish the harder parts of the fictionalized account of real events. Van Peebles the younger, having been a key actor in the offscreen drama surrounding the making of the 1971 film was also a keen observer of the harrowing and destructive circumstances in which it was born.

From the outset let me say that Baadasssss! is not for everyone. Like its namesake, the 2004 movie has a target audience although I do not think they are the same demographic. In 1971, van Peebles’s father was looking to make a movie about the black experience told from the perspective of a black artist. His goal seemed to be, through flouting union customs and thumbing his nose at the Hollywood-studio machine, to bring people together in a surreal, fictionalized truth--a kind of run-you-ragged Utopia in which everyone is so tired from pursuing a common objective that no one has time to oppress anyone else.

This is not the goal the younger van Peebles seems to have as he portrays his father onscreen. Instead of urging people to come together, the 2004 movie takes it for granted that at least some of the desired effect the 1971 film has been achieved. Mario pays tribute to Melvin and Melvin’s vision in the way in which his telling of the story over three decades later assumes that barriers have been broken and change has come to pass. It is a bittersweet remembrance because Melvin sacrificed a lot to bring his vision into the world, and Mario seems to use this movie as a forum in which to deal with his own feelings about what his father lost and what the world gained.

In final analysis, Baadasssss! worked for me on two levels. As a story, it was dramatic and interesting. That is a key in any film if the director hopes the audience will pay attention for the message. As a message movie, the themes were subtly woven and sometimes so faint as to avoid conscious detection. This piqued my interest in seeing Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, but I fear it may no longer be available in video stores. I believe in 1971 there was a van Peebles singing the praises of every man, and in 2004 there is another van Peebles singing as sweetly the praises of every artist. When an artist makes a movie he just has to make regardless of the usual Hollywood considerations, he deserves a listen from other artists.

Rating:	(2 out of 4 stars)
Baadasssss! is currently playing in the Bay Area.

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