Very disappointing...

As Good As It Gets

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Unless you were an adult in the 1990s, Jungle Fever probably won't strike a chord with you, so you might want to keep looking for tonight's evening entertainment. In 1991, it was a big enough deal for a black man to have an affair with his white, Italian secretary to inspire Spike Lee to make one of his controversial, heavy dramas he's known for. People who weren't even born yet might not be able to relate; Moonlight might be the movie they talk about with their friends instead.Wesley Snipes is married to Lonette McKee, but when he has an affair with Annabella Sciorra, everyone's world gets turned upside down. At first they keep their affair a secret, no only because he's married, but because an interracial relationship wouldn't immediately be accepted by their friends and family. But, of course, since this is a Spike Lee Joint, you can bet on the secret getting out, tensions reaching their boiling points, and lives getting destroyed.What I like about this movie-Jungle Fever is my favorite of Spike Lee's films-is there are many more issues discussed than race. Samuel L. Jackson plays a junkie, and the relationship between him, his brother Wesley, and his parents Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, is truly accessible and heartbreaking. Lonette and her friends have a heart-to-heart about what it's like to be a black woman trying to find romance in a culture that doesn't generally link beauty with dark skin. In one of the most memorable scenes for me, Wesley and Annabella are playing around, having a good time on the sidewalk; an outsider mistakes their interaction for attempted rape and calls the police. It's a very chilling scene, one that's still incredibly applicable today. Much of the movie is, but since it's very obviously a "90s movie", modern audiences might not find it edgy enough. Grown-ups remember how edgy it was, and when we re-watch it-if we choose to; it is very heavy-it'll still seem edgy.Keep an eye out for Halle Berry and Queen Latifah in very small parts. Halle plays Sam's junkie girlfriend, and while her performance looks like a bad community theater rehearsal, Queen's small part as a tired, overworked waitress is much better acted. On the Italian side, John Turturro and Anthony Quinn add to the cast.Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to graphic sex scenes, language, and violence, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

Jungle Fever has a star packed cast that delivers marvelous performances. Unfortunately, they are wasted on Lee's loosey goosey directing. Jungle Fever opens with Spike Lee's favorite character of all time, New York. After a plethora of images of street signs, subways, Harlem, and the words "Spike Lee" we open on a slow motion shot of a newspaper flying through the air...which seems to have no other significance than presenting the words "The New York Times"! After which we see a sex scene with Flipper played by Wesley Snipes loudly making love with his black wife. Why mention black? Because this is a movie about race, and since Jungle Fever is not gonna put in the effort to tactfully express its theme neither will I. Flipper is an upper-middle class architect working at a firm controlled by two white men. Although putting it in pen and paper that he requests a black secretary instead he is given a young Italian American woman named Angie. Angie lives at home providing the motherly stand in for her very Italian father and brothers. Flipper and Angie, never having been intimate with anyone outside their race (except for Flipper's half Caucasian wife) work late into the evenings and eventually build an attraction to each other which Spike Lee calls "Jungle Fever". Thus, their interracial affair begins causing tension to build and explode between a multitude of characters. In addition Flipper also has a crack head brother played by Samuel L Jackson who runs around with his crackhead girlfriend played by Halle Berry looking to score cash from all his bloodlines including his poor mother who can't help but give into her 1st son when he does a little dance. The film's time is split between an assortment of characters who make up a collection of stories on interracial relationships and the ethnic hardships of New York Blacks and Italians. To give an example of how over handed and disjointed the racism is portrayed there is a scene where Flipper and Angie are pretend boxing. Flipper grabs Angie pinning her onto a car when Police officers show up forcing Flipper in a submissive position shoving a gun into his face. Obviously they had misread the situation but with Flipper screaming "I'm gonna kill you!" with his hands on her neck its understandable why the officers jumped to that conclusion. There's also a scene where Angie's father beats her for having relations with a "nigger". Perhaps it's the age of the film and people back then needed racism to be spelled out in a very overt and sensational manner. Jungle Fever is without a center jumping all over the place with extremely poor editing. The editor Samuel Pollard has edited mainly documentaries since, which is fantastic. The further he stays away from narratives the better. I'm trying to figure out how these scenes possibly transitioned into one another in script. I know that Lee likes to do harsh transitions but this film is just ridiculous. Jungle Fever is littered with ueven pacing and scenes that lose their punch because people need to walk in and out of frame. Example: Flipper and Angie are being ignored at a restruant because they're interracial then at the end of the scene when Queen Latifah, playing the waitress, walks off there's a 3 second cutaway where two bystanders say "She's White!?" "Mhmm Hmm" Jungle Fever is a film that indulgently satisfies itself. You feel ever bit of Lee's directorial manipulation while be beats you over the head with dialogue after dialogue about people's opinion on race & society. In fact there is a four minute scene of 5-6 black women just talking in a room about how about how they are disenfranchised. What is the point of a camera if you're just going to film taking heads? The camera angles and techniques in this film are all over the place in this film. In a scene where Flipper is asking for partner the camera just spins around them for about 3 minutes. I'm sure it was hard technique to film but why do these obtrusive techniques show up randomly throughout the film. I'm wondering if Lee showed up on set and rolled a dice every day. "OH look It's a 3, that means today I wanna put me and Wesley on a dolly and we are just gonna do this scene like we're drifting like ghosts". Strange camera techniques like these make me believe that Spike Lee wanted to make an experimental film. On the plus note all the actors are amazing and Spike Lee has a great eye for talent. Samuel Jackson STEALS this movie! Every scene with Jackson is a treasure and I'm sure when he's given his life time achievement award and there showing clips of his work, Jungle Fever will be contained in that reel. This movie is fun to watch to watch for the acting but I would recommend a more contemporary film such as "Everday People" [2004] if you wanted to see a New York film dealing with race.

Lots of hate and not much love is the feeling I get when looking this film up; ironic then that the idea of interracial relationships in 1990s America has much the same stance on the idea – stick to what you know or else people who have long since died will be angry at you, oh and the current parent who hasn't died (the father in both cases) will either threaten to or indeed literally beat you senseless.I don't think Jungle Fever, directed by Spike Lee, is all that bad in fact I found it interesting, engaging and somewhat tragic which means I liked it; I liked it a lot. I think one of the primary reasons this film works is that it achieves something extremely difficult and that's being able to get across a narrative of love, loss and temptation all the time being able to put across and offer opinions on race and ethnicity whilst also being able to merge in a healthy and satisfying amount of humour which, oddly enough, only really comes along when the film is dealing with its 'tragedy' sub-plot involving Gator (Jackson). The idea behind the character is tragic but it is Jackson's presence and approach to the material that makes it humorous: a crack addict that turns up at the most inconvenient of times asking for money, often doing a little dance in order to get it; but he does not learn the wrong of his ways and that's the tragic thing.So you see, the fact that Spike Lee has created this universe for all these issues to be digested and be put across all the time keeping you interest with some individual acting performances, good music and a fair amount memorable dialogue moments is extremely impressive – my favourite of which is Spike Lee himself portraying a character who goes up in extremities when he learns of an affair, the fact the wife doesn't know and then that the girl is actually white. Jungle Fever starts out in pretty humorous yet tragic circumstances, echoing the atmosphere to come for the rest of the film; the pre-film titles have road signs displaying things like 'drugs, left; crack, right' which is a damned if you do, damned if you don't idea that works amongst the upbeat music. It's this sort of juxtaposition in visuals that works and challenges the viewer as well as possibly being Lee getting across what life is like in these sorts of places 'No matter where you turn, you cannot escape certain failure'.So, to have the rather oddly named Flipper Purify (Snipes) as an architect who is living a good life with a great job with great prospects with a wonderful wife and kid gives us the sense he is an achiever but he cannot live in a district that is pleasant, so that 'tag' that you never escape the ghetto is present. Likewise, Flipper is a big cheese in his company but he must answer to two white yuppies ahead of him and when things get a little heated, it seems the two white men have defeated the hard working black character. But it is Flipper's own stupidity that sees him go on his journey of hell and self-discovery and all in the name of curiosity which is the film's only real flaw but I cannot hold it too much against it. This is a film in which everybody gets a bite of the cherry; the African-American characters in the film are people who are striving to survive (the credits suggesting the ghetto is a no win place suggests this) doing whatever means necessary no matter how high up you are (crack head or rich architect); Italians are people who perhaps come across as quite needlessly aggressive and yet are the sorts who hold onto values and friendships despite whatever situations arise – they are also people who look out for their sisters.Then there are the women; in what is one of Jungle Fever's more remarkable scenes, a half dozen women sit around and consolidate Drew (McKee) as she comes to terms with the affair. It is remarkable because it shows women have a voice and they are voicing their opinions in a true-to life manner – remarkable that Lee scripts this scene and shoots it not in a voyeuristic manner but one that lets us know how they feel; I wonder how many other films revolving around an male instigated affair would stop to include this scene? Jungle Fever is a film that has heart but it has brains to boot; there is another great scene when Frankie Botz (Badalucco) is being wound up over his girl and he slams people who are Aryan, blaming Hollywood (another Spike Lee scripted dig?) for it but this is right after heart of gold Italian Paulie Carbone (Turturro) points out that Italian's several decades ago who paid the blacks equal wages were hung for doing so; this echoes the overall theme of the film in a single scene, that being that "it is the 1990s, things like this happen" says Debi Mazar's character and that the disapproving parents should not be too affected by something that supposedly insults tradition.Jungle Fever is not about 'x' is black and shouldn't date 'y' because they're white; if anything it's about the reason to stick with your partner: if Flipper was curious as to what 'white' would've been like, surely that echoes compliment to Drew because he doesn't consider he so; even though she has been bullied over the light tone of her skin. Spike Lee has made something here that is epic and intriguing; tragic and yet funny at times. This is a modern piece trying to push out what's wrong and what's right: 'stay with partner' is better than 'stay with race' but that doesn't mean you have to choose the latter if you cannot keep the former.

Spike Lee is unfortunately judged more based on his political involvement and the sparks that fly sometimes with him and other celebrities. If he were more often judged based on his films, he would be revered. He is truly a master, one of the greatest of all time. He has a way of making the audience face the story and its characters as if the situation were right there in the room with them that hardly any other director has, no matter how brilliant. He has such an uncanny ability for capturing realism in its rawest form, a form somehow linked to his hypnotic cinematic style, which is constantly developing further into something even greater and more innovative. Not only have I never seen a Spike Lee film that I haven't liked, but I have hardly seen any that I wouldn't give a rating of 10 on this site.Jungle Fever is a drama about an interracial love affair between self-centered, hyperconfident married black businessman Snipes and humble, sensitive and prudent white temp secretary from an Italian neighborhood and the effect it has on their respective neighborhoods and social lives. Yet, it blooms into a larger, deeper, more expansive story, as each of its many minor characters branch off into their own story with its own subtle relevance and case in point. Though Jungle Fever has been knocked for making a point about interracial relationships, for every point it makes it has a counterpoint for contrast.The movie has brash, consistent music, a fiery and impassioned visual effect, and another characteristic Spike Lee touch, which is his knack for drawing from his actors intensely real performances, especially Sciorra, whom I always love.