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First I will admit that I never saw Boyz N The Hood, which apparently is the predecessor to Baby Boy (but this is not a sequel). So I may have missed a few things, and thus can only tell you what I saw. Plot wise, the movie starts off with a psychological theory that the Black man in America has been taught and treated by society that they are not men, but boys. Then Baby Boy shifts gears into the life of Jody (Tyrese), a young Black man growing up in LA. Jody still lives at home with his mamma despite having two kids of his own. Each kid by a different mother. The mother of his second child, Yvette (Taraji P. Henson) loves Jody and wants him to move in with her and start acting like a father. Jody isn’t quite ready for this and keeps sleeping around with lots of women, including his ex Kim (Angell Conwell), the mother of his first child. Meanwhile Jody is also dealing with his mother’s new boyfriend Melvin (Ving Rhames, Mission: Impossible II), who is an ex-gangsta and ex-con that has turned his life around and now owns his own business. Jody’s issues with Melvin are twofold: one he doesn’t want to see his mom beat like past boyfriends have done, and he doesn’t want to get kicked out of the house. In addition to these things, he lives in LA and is surrounded by the gangsta lifestyle and his friend ‘P’ (Omar Gooding) is a recovering gangster if you will, but can’t quite seem to put that life behind him. So, the majority of the movie is focused on the turmoil created by all of these competing influences on Jody. Baby Boy tries to be a study of a young Black man trying to grow up in a lower-middleclass Black neighborhood. The movie starts with the baby theory, then supports it by showing issues confronting the Black man that can keep him from growing up. My problem with that, these issues are not just Black issues, but more issues of socioeconomic status. Now I will say that issues like absent fathers and the gangster life are more prevalent among the African-American community, but they are certainly not exclusive to that portion of society. However, the movie was still interesting, though rough. The acting was good, the directing was good (writer/director John Singleton), and the story was interesting. That said, I will give Baby Boy seven couches on the About-Movies.com scale. See yawl later.
Last updated: Saturday, October 28, 2006 05:37:35 PM Click Here to get back into frames.
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