Some Don't Like It Hot
Blog Trends from My Bunk /
Christopher Campbell
Miscellaneous | November 9, 2009 | Comments (12)
Regardless of how much everyone loves Some Like it Hot, Tootsie, and even the Joker-in-nurse-drag scene from The Dark Knight, nobody will ever be excited about a cross-dressing comedy in its early stages (Just look at how Dustin reacted to his man-crush Ryan Reynolds being cast in a drag film). So it’s no surprise the movie blog chatter over Sheneneh and Wanda, in which Martin Lawrence and Jamie Foxx will play the titular, bank-robbing women, is entirely negative.
But, hey, at least the guys aren’t playing White Chicks, right? And at least Lawrence isn’t again playing an obese Southern grandma (oh wait — well, at least not in this movie). In fact, the actors aren’t even playing male characters in drag. They’re full-on playing the opposite sex, which would hopefully mean Foxx wins his next Oscar in Linda Hunt-type fashion.
Now for the best part of this news: the fact that Lawrence and Foxx are bringing together minor characters from two separate ’90s TV series (Martin and In Living Color, respectively) gives me hope that Hollywood will soon buy the likely-already-circulating script Soup Nazi and Cigarette Smoking Man.
Anyway, Sheneneh and Wanda already has a trailer, sort of, which is more than most bad ideas have at the greenlight stage. Surely Screen Gems, who are producing the comedy, saw something in that video, which was originally made for this year’s BET Awards. If you didn’t see the potential for big laughs and, more importantly, big money, then you just don’t get it, obviously. Unlike all these people.
Behold the skeptics:
- S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline:
“Jamie Foxx and Martin Lawrence will co-star in Sheneneh and Wanda, a feature-length reprise of a bit going back to their stand-up days. It involves both men in drag as the bank-robbing title characters. In related news, the landmark case Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences vs. Foxx should be reaching the Supreme Court some time early next year.”
- Kevin Jagernauth at The Playlist:
“[The Skank Robbers sketch] apparently impressed suits who thought that the audience’s roaring approval meant it would be a good movie idea. Of course, as anyone knows, people will cheer for anything and anyone at an awards show and should not be used as the basis to determine anything. What’s next? Are studios going to set up applause meters to figure out what film to put in production next? Christ, don’t people read scripts anymore?”
- Monika Bartyzel at Cinematical:
“Granted, I’m not some old-school Sheneneh fan, but what exactly is it about this pair that makes them worthy not only of a feature film, but also being fast-tracked? Hasn’t Hollywood already gotten enough comedians cross-dressing? Don’t these men have something better to do than … this? And if now is the time to bring In Living Color to the big screen, oh, the other characters I would pick.”
- Josh Tyler at Cinema Blend:
“To be fair, back in the ’90s black, male comedians wearing skirts was still sort of new. Maybe these characters weren’t particularly funny but they were at least marginally fresh ideas. Now the concept has been beaten to death by a whole host of utterly untalented people. Heck, one of those people was Martin Lawrence. They’ll need a time machine to make this idea funny again.”
- Matt Goldberg at Collider:
“I guess this Foxx and Lawrence wanted to return to their comedy roots but couldn’t they come up with fresh characters instead? Sheneneh and Wanda are stupid characters and not in an entertaining way. And to those who say, “Matt, you honky, you don’t get it because you’re not black,” let me just respond that I found it just as stupid when David Spade, Adam Sandler, and Chris Farley played the vapid mall girls on SNL. Crappy, one-note comic characters transcend race.”
- Wookie Johnson at Screen Junkies:
“H-h-heeyyyyy!! Move over 1980s nostalgia because here comes an unexpected dose of 1990s “oh yeah, hey, I remember that vaguely.” […] It’s what Set It Off would have been like if Queen Latifah had played all the roles.”
- Rodney at The Movie Blog:
“Machete was grown from pure fantasy in a fake movie trailer and thanks to stem cell research will now be developed as a fully realized film, and it seems that Martin Lawrence and Jaimie Foxx refused to be outdone.”
- Mark at I Watch Stuff (way back on Oct. 16):
“Good news if you’re Jamie Foxx’s arch-enemy, and you’d really been hoping he’d go from acclaimed, Oscar-winning performances to a ridiculous Gerard Butler thriller and something called Skank Robbers.”
Comments
Posted by: Alexandra at November 9, 2009 8:14 PM
I always thought Wanda was hilarious on In Living Color, but in my defense, I was only ten years old. Now, I know better.