DysFunktional Family Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)March 25th, 2003
DYSFUNKTIONAL FAMILY
# stars based on 4 stars: 3
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten
Miramax Films
Directed by: George Gallo
Written by: Eddie Griffin
Cast: Eddie Griffin
Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 3/24/03
Arguments about how to raise your children have been bandied about since the founding of the republic. Eddie Griffin won't have the last word on the debate pitting psychology against spanking but if you take him at his word, you could swear that giving whuppings is the way to go. Though neither his stand-up comedy in "Dysfunktional Family" nor his performance in Malcolm D. Lee's "Undercover Brother" could without hesitation be called crossover humor (we note the scarcity of white faces in the SRO 3600-seat Chicago theater), there's little reason to believe that people of all races and creeds could not find quite a bit to relate to, to smile broadly, even to laugh out loud at some of this gifted man's antics.
While the film directed by George Gallo is called "Dysfunktional Family" (with the emphasis on the word "funk," defined as "a dejected frame of mind"), there is nothing in Griffin's upbringing that we would find alien. Edited exquisitely by Michael R. Miller with Theo Van De Sande in charge of the seven technologically super Sony 24P high-def digital video camcorders, "Dysfunktional Family" spends most of its all-too-brief eighty-two minutes on the stage of the theater with frequent pans to a rolling-in-the-aisles audience but also with frequent cuts to Griffin's Kansas City, Missouri roots where the comic does riffs on his family and puts on some of the folks he meets on the street.
Griffin, who it's safe to say is the successor to Richard Pryor's in his no-holds-barred rap and off-the-wall commentary, takes on racism, the gay lifestyle, international politics, his mother, his uncles, Michael Jackson, and best of all the many facets of sexual activity; but even when he appears to be beating up on the gays, you can tell by his expressive, Rodney-Dangerfield eyes and his gleaming smile that his commentary must be taken with more than a grain of salt. Sentimentalists in the audience will be pleased by the love he shows to his mother, despite and perhaps even because of the many whippings she gave him as a kid, whacks that he believes probably kept him out of the penitentiary and drug programs.
With the "n" word and the "f" word in solid competition from his lips, Griffin tells it like is about Michael Jackson, whom he compares to Ari from Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. (We see the image of Helena Bonham Carter in appropriate attire and sure enough...) He gives thanks to America for inviting the black man to our shores some 450 years ago, indicating that who wouldn't want to trade the verdant lands and wide-open spaces of the African continent for a job picking cotton under the overseer's whip? Proud that he owns two cats which are as independent as he is, he puts down dogs as creatures who slobber over their owners, fetching their slippers without the foggiest idea of the rhyme or reason.
While Griffin would do fine in a strictly one-man show, his supporting cast adds to the merriment, particularly his Uncle Curtis, a large fellow who can watch porn (he has a large collection of tapes) and discuss the action as though he were Roger Ebert discoursing on "Last Year at Marienbad."
Kids are told in school, "You can be anything you want to be," which is inspirational but simply not true. After all can you imagine millions of Americans trying to do a job as stand-up comics and actors with anywhere near the spontaneity and downright gifted patter as Eddie Griffin?
Rated R. 82 minutes. Copyright 2003 by Harvey Karten at
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