It all started out as a joke. "Soiled Sinema is all about the Benjamin's!" - Which we are. This drove me to purchase a film that most every generation X youth had already seen save for me. Starring the glorified action star Ice Cube and pathetic funnyman Mike Epps (whose pathetic career has involved him in various colorful situations where he flaunts an annoying persona), All About the Benjamins features rampant glamorized displays of idiosyncratic greed and ethnic superiority as the two positive Black leads trump the "underlings." Poor, poor Francesco. May our memories go out to him. He's in a better place now.
Ice Cube has dug himself in a safe zone with his collaborating rap efforts of N.W.A., Westside Connection, and even his solo projects. For this, I bare nary foul feelings for the man; the legend. After his comedic enterprises flourished with the subsequent hit release of Friday, Cube Vision formed with the motive of creating Ice Cube starred comedies and such which spawned 3 Friday sequels and other black cultured comedies revolving around barbershop hi-jinx that bored white audiences around the world. With the eventual release of All About the Benjamins, the probable theory of "big" action stars was born. I say this because after watching a chunky Negro run around the set of XXX: State of the Union, I can swear that the action genre has never been the same.
Ice Cube's film credits have always had an edgy racial context to them. Despite he himself being an inspiration to many black people, he creates films showing black people as disgusting citizens who shit constantly while twitching and cooking meals out of "fried chikin" and collared greens. All About the Benjamins strays from normal African stereotypes and focuses on greed in many forms. A self-gaining sort and an oblivious form. In this film, Ice Cube's searching for diamonds to produce his own P.I. firm while Mike Epps is attempting to recover his $60 million dollar winning lottery ticket to which he shouts daydreams of spending it all on "bling". The idea itself is insulting to the current state of our economy. This wasn't as bad of an idea as the creation of Confessions of a Shopaholic.
The action sequences are decently shot and don't suffer too much from jump-cuts and obnoxious editing techniques. Just when the getting is good, Mike Epps saves the day by bumbling around, dropping weapons in water and just generally fucking everything up. The final product is highly entertaining but irritating in seasoned retrospect. It seems that Ice Cube has a habit with pairing up with the most annoying actors in existence, a stooge if you will, as if to make himself look cool by comparison; but hey, it works wonders for his large ego. All About the Benjamins is a bit of a blunder baring subversive sociological elements but in the end makes the project contrived, nevertheless amusing on a high level. In a way, Soiled Sinema is all about the Benjamin's.
Ice Cube has dug himself in a safe zone with his collaborating rap efforts of N.W.A., Westside Connection, and even his solo projects. For this, I bare nary foul feelings for the man; the legend. After his comedic enterprises flourished with the subsequent hit release of Friday, Cube Vision formed with the motive of creating Ice Cube starred comedies and such which spawned 3 Friday sequels and other black cultured comedies revolving around barbershop hi-jinx that bored white audiences around the world. With the eventual release of All About the Benjamins, the probable theory of "big" action stars was born. I say this because after watching a chunky Negro run around the set of XXX: State of the Union, I can swear that the action genre has never been the same.
Ice Cube's film credits have always had an edgy racial context to them. Despite he himself being an inspiration to many black people, he creates films showing black people as disgusting citizens who shit constantly while twitching and cooking meals out of "fried chikin" and collared greens. All About the Benjamins strays from normal African stereotypes and focuses on greed in many forms. A self-gaining sort and an oblivious form. In this film, Ice Cube's searching for diamonds to produce his own P.I. firm while Mike Epps is attempting to recover his $60 million dollar winning lottery ticket to which he shouts daydreams of spending it all on "bling". The idea itself is insulting to the current state of our economy. This wasn't as bad of an idea as the creation of Confessions of a Shopaholic.
The action sequences are decently shot and don't suffer too much from jump-cuts and obnoxious editing techniques. Just when the getting is good, Mike Epps saves the day by bumbling around, dropping weapons in water and just generally fucking everything up. The final product is highly entertaining but irritating in seasoned retrospect. It seems that Ice Cube has a habit with pairing up with the most annoying actors in existence, a stooge if you will, as if to make himself look cool by comparison; but hey, it works wonders for his large ego. All About the Benjamins is a bit of a blunder baring subversive sociological elements but in the end makes the project contrived, nevertheless amusing on a high level. In a way, Soiled Sinema is all about the Benjamin's.
-mAQ
This is a movie I've actually never seen myself. Not sure why though. I've seen some of Ice Cube's other movies.
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed in movies with black female characters that are the girlfriend/wife/interest of the main character, it's always a high yeller black?
ReplyDeleteOn the far left of the picture where Ice Cube is running theres an incredibly gorgeous blonde bird, is there any way you could mask Cube out of the image completely and then zoom in on the gorgeous blonde bird and then somehow air-brush out the skimpi bikini she is wearing so that we could see her tits, twat, and arse. I`d be really obliged, its also obvious she must have been an extra on the movie so i was just wondering w-heather you knew if she`d done any porn (soft or hard-core)?, if so i`d also be really obliged if you could tell me the tit-les shes appeared in, thanks.
ReplyDelete