Sadly Over-hyped

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Revisiting familiar territory he explored in his breakthrough independent She's Gotta Have It, Spike Lee takes a bigger budget, professional actors and delivers a far inferior product. It's a case of Spike having it and not knowing what to do with it. Aspiring actress Judy get's a screen test for a film being done by Quentin Tarantino. QT gets ugly though and this sour's Judy's career outlook. Burning bridges with her agent and acting coach and desperate for work she takes a job as a phone sex operator. She develops a knack for it and soon as "Girl 6" is in demand with customers. Dealing with warped customers and a former lover who shoplifts for a living Judy begins to jade and fade from reality. Sloppy, disjointed and in a constant state of funk Girl 6 is filled with lackluster performances and insipid "goofs" by Lee such as a smoldering cameo by Madonna reminding us just how bad an actress and self parody she is along with an obnoxious turn by Tarantino as himself. Not to be outdone Lee piles the detritus on by jamming a parody of the Jeffersons (with himself as George) into the torpid proceedings as well as a ham fisted, film school 101 Foxy Brown take. Therese Randle as Girl 6 is beautiful, flat and dull. Given every male in the pic is an insensitive lout, ( though Lee doing his "... have It" Mars with some of the same dialog lifted from the film redeems himself to a degree) one might understand why she stumbles through the picture shell shocked most of the time. Isiah Washington as an ex also gives a fatigued and unprepared turn as the principled booster. Girl 6 is a slow moving bore with Lee failing to amp up the drama with any degree of passion or deliver any character of substance with depth. At a loss to develop Judy he compensates with misogynistic stereotypes to dramatize her plight ala SGHI re-worked, colorized, sensationalized, and amazingly puerile for a feature film. It's all silly surliness.

I'm really not sure what to make of this movie. Teresa Randle (Bad Boys, Bad Boys II) plays a struggling actress that takes a phone sex job and finds that she is good at it. Now, how can someone who got upset taking off her top for Quentin Tarantino want to do phone sex? Well, she did and was doing OK until she decided to get into the kinkier stuff. Then the job began taking over her. One thing that she did manage to do is gain enough confidence that , when she auditioned for that slime Ron Silver (I told you I hate that guy), she didn't even hesitate and just walked out when he asked her to do the same thing.What makes this movie hard to watch is that there are movies going on within the movie. I'm having a hard time figuring out what Director Spike Lee is trying to accomplish. Maybe that is why it didn't last very long in the theaters as no one else can figure out what he was trying to do either.The film featured others like Isaiah Washington (Grey's Anatomy), Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos), Richard Belzer (Law & Order SVU) Madonna, and Naomi Campbell (New York Sanitation Department).Of course, any movie that features Halle Berry, even briefly, is worth a look. I should have quit looking after her appearance.

Once again, I've watched a Spike Lee movie and wasn't very impressed. But, the real truth is that I just didn't understand it. Maybe he is too conceptual for me?Okay, you get the message. Women can't get acting gigs unless they flash their tits. So what does principal actress do after refusing to take off her top-she gets a job acting about having virtual sex! So she's able to pay the bills, but is still selling herself.The ex-husband is a pain-in-the-ass philosopher type who only steals "what he needs." Again Lee has to push the idea that every man wants a white woman. This is evidenced about halfway through film when boss tells all the phone sex women to be white unless asked to be otherwise. Yawn. The visuals are pleasant and Prince's songs really sound great. In fact, I only rented this film after I bought the soundtrack. Acting was good, the cameos are well-chosen and well-placed. But, I thought the movie could have done/said more.Don't go out of your way to see it, but if its it on, its worth a watch.

I noticed that one of the user reviews for this film had a problem believing it was realistic enough. That this was a Suzan-Lori Parks script really says it all. She's a pulitzer prize winning playwright, the first African-American woman to win, whose plays are very often based on historical archival material. Something I've noticed from works of all kinds, books, films, plays, etc..., that include archival material and historical events and characters is that often the most bizarre and surreal things in the work come from the true story. A specific reference regarding Suzan-Lori Parks is her play Venus.