The Hood Meets High Society
Mike Epps plays Carl Smith, who, after coming into a small fortune under suspicious circumstances, decides to move his family from the Chicago ghetto to Blanco Cielo, an exclusive Beverly Hills development. On the cross-country trip with him are his wife Lorena, played by Zulay Henao, dating-age daughter Allie, played by Bresha Webb, and adolescent son Carl, Jr. played by Alex Henderson.
On arrival in their new home, Carl proceeds to offend everyone he encounters. He starts with the gated community’s security guard, a new African immigrant. First Carl calls the security guard too dark-skinned to profile another black person. Although the guard is just doing his job, Carl gets mean with him and accuses him of having Ebola.
That’s not a great start for the Smiths, but it gets worse.
Next, Lorena hires a manicurist, who happens to be Asian, played by Kathrien Ahn. Carl asks her to give him “some Chinese head.” Carl is a real charmer!
That was bad, but Carl and Co aren’t finished yet…
They decide to take a get-acquainted stroll around the neighborhood, and, as expected, Carl antagonizes his neighbors, too.
And this is where the parody of The Purge comes in. In case you are not familiar with that horror flick, all you need to know is that at a certain time and day, all crimes are legal for the next 12-hour period. All crimes really means all crimes: bashing, shooting, stealing, destruction, even murder.
While upsetting his neighbors, Carl learns that “The Purge” is due to start at 7 pm that evening.
As if he hadn’t already been politically-incorrect enough already, we are treated to a really politically-incorrect parody closely patterned on the original Purge. First, Allie’s boyfriend, played by Andrew Bachelor, shows up unannounced, and then Carl Jr. turns out to be a technical whiz, and he has a robot and a drone at his disposal. That is exactly what happened in The Purge.
After the sun goes down, and the estate is engulfed in darkness, a number of adversaries descend on the area, one-by-one, each of them with evil intentions. One is a Ku Klux Klansman played by Michael Caradoona, a repo man played by DeRay Davis, a revenge-minded parolee played by Charlie Murphy, Carl’s ex-wife Shoranda played by Tameka “Tiny” Cottle and his crazy cousin Cronut played by Lil Duval.
Unfortunately for those of us watching this debacle, co-writer/director Deon Taylor decided to appeal to the lowest common denominator repeatedly. The result is that Meet The Blacks is not funny at all, and it is a demeaning throwback reminiscent of Amos ‘n’ Andy.
The audience score so far, and it only just opened, is a miserable 29% of just under 3,000 moviegoers liked it.
Meet The Blacks turns out to be a joke, in which they will do anything for a laugh, with self-hating and hurtful jokes that don’t work. It is an expletive and N-word laced descent into trashiness. This is really horrible and a total waste. Be ready for a 90 minute waste of your time.
Meet the Blacks
Poor (0 stars)
Rated R for sexuality, violence, ethnic slurs, drug use and pervasive profanity
Running time: 90 minutes
Studio: Hidden Empire Film Group
Distributor: Freestyle Releasing
Meet the Blacks Trailer is a Travesty
Watch the Meet the Blacks trailer and weep.
