WhatzUp

Baby Boy
by Derek Neff

Writer/director John Singleton’s Baby Boy is a sequel of sorts to his 1991 classic Boyz in the Hood. All of the characters are different here, but, just as with Boyz, we’re back in South Central L.A., back in the life of a young-but-old-enough-to-know-better black man, Jody (Tyrese Gibson), and back in a do-or-die situation that may or may not end tragically. Jody is 19, an ex-con who is now smart enough to keep himself out of trouble, but not yet mature enough to find a steady job, or to move out from under his mother’s roof. Jody has two children with two different women, both of whose beds he visits as his mood suits him. And the man his mother is now dating (played by Ving Rhames) is yet another menacing figure looming over his largely aimless existence.

Jody is a complex character: highly-flawed, not entirely likeable, lacking in wisdom, but essentially a gentle soul trying to do the right thing. Every scene shows Jody struggling to assert a modicum of control over his life — either by selling women’s clothing in hair salons, or by defending his mother against what he sees as her boyfriend’s inevitable battering, or by trying (with great difficulty) to remain faithful to his girlfriend Yvette (Taraji P. Henson).

I love a movie that inserts me so deeply into the life of its main character that I become familiar with his home, the inside of his car, the apartments of his friends and lovers, the décor of his bedroom. You usually have to turn to a novel for this kind of layered sense of place, of social texture. That Jody is allowed to be as flawed as he is is a testament to Singleton’s continuing brilliance as a director. (You could check out any Singleton movie — Higher Education or Rosewood — for the same novelistic sense of place and people.)

The performances are great. Gibson is completely believable as Jody. Henson’s portrayal of Jody’s prideful girlfriend Yvette is also authentic-seeming: we sincerely care for her, and yet we understand why she loves Jody, occasionally to her own detriment. As Melvin, Rhames gives yet another great performance in a very tricky role. It would have been so easy for Melvin to be painted only as a ticking bomb, but Rhames shows us how tormenting is his personal struggle not to give in to his violent side.

Singleton has grown up quite a bit since he made Boyz, and so have his characters. What in Boyz culminated in a violently tragic outcome now seems, compared to Baby Boy, something of a cop-out. It would be too easy for Jody to die tragically. How much more challenging, and interesting, to have him live, to have him overcome his obstacles the hard way, step by tentative step.