Chris Knipp
07-23-2007, 05:29 AM
Kaci Lemmons: Talk to Me (2007)
Talk to Me could say more
Review by Chris Knipp
In the late Sixties a populist DC radio station called WOL was losing its audience when a newly released ex-con, Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. (Don Cheadle), who had done a radio show for the prisoners, talked himself into a gig and became a local icon at a time when black was beautiful and the black local audience had to have somebody who could keep it real. Petey became such a notable figure--he probably influenced many who followed--because he couldn't do it any other way. He's a natural, and his roughness came when it was the voice people needed to hear.
The middle man in this transformation of DC radio is the black program manager Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who sees Petey in prison when visiting his own inmate brother. Hughes is initially scornful, but Petey wins him over and he overrides the trepidations of the white station owner, E.G. Sonderling (Martin Sheen).
Talk to Me is lively and hilarious in its early segments when Cheadle is almost all ghetto schtick. Even if the essence of the gate-crashing episodes was already blown for anybody who saw the trailer; even though it's not much more than spiced-up sit-com material (Ella Taylor wrote, "I felt as though someone had trapped me in a time-warped episode of 'The Jeffersons'"), it's still outrageous fun, and as a straight man, Ejiofor is fine because he gives Dewey Hughes such authority. It's a laugh, maybe a relief, to see the staid and gentrified Don Cheadle--the African humanitarian; the college roommate of Adam Sandler; the boon companion of Clooney and Pitt and Damon--get a chance to act down and dirty, rude and black. But the movie works at this point because of foils, starting with Dewey. Ejiofor and Cheadle are great together. The early scenes are all sharp and well paced.
If only the movie could have maintained its opening level of energy and outrageousness, but it can't. At the center is the radio talk, and Petey's message is so simple that it doesn't go very far, not the way his on-the-air lines are written. Then Petey's story turns tragic. He's a small man whose rough life brought him down: he smoked and drank too much and despite his cockiness he had serious self doubts. Whether it was "being real" that led him away from rising beyond the radio station to become a national figure or just the same fear that hit him the first time he went on the air at WOL, Petey is no Richard Pryor. Why the comedy turns to a tragedy is a complicated internal story that might be developed better in a simpler, more articulate format--in a play. Cheadle does the decline of Petey Greene almost as well as he did the opening street-hustler schtick. You can hardly look at his face at times toward the end: its defiance has so clearly turned to defeat. But the movie feels lacking in unity.
Did this even have to be a bio-pic--does it contain enough material for one? If the director, Kaci Lemmons, and the writers, Michael Genet and Rick Fumuyiwa, had had something more particular to say, things might have gone differently. Instead the movie, despite some strong scenes and consistently good acting, is uneven in tone and focus and style. The cinematography is a jumble of clumsy crowd scenes, fake video, sit-com style interiors, and extreme close-ups. The tone, as suggested, rambles from cocky and outrageous to earnest and maudlin. As a biography Petey's story is shallow and anecdotal--and the historical background, despite the strong emotional passage on the assassination of Dr. King--Petey's moment of true leadership--lacks depth and specificity too. Mostly it's history through clothes and hairstyles.
As is the way of bio-pics, Petey's downfall is defined through a single episode, when Dewey Hughes gets him a chance to appear on the Johnny Carson Show and he completely blows it, embarrassing everyone. Petey almost runs off in the half hour before he's to go on camera, and we suspect he'll just get drunk, as he did before opening a James Brown concert right after the M.L. King assassination and DC riots he helped quell. When Hughes later declares that when he was growing up he learned everything from the Carson show about the world beyond the projects he lived in as a youth, that's another dead end in character development. And surely the downfall of Petey Greene was more complex than this.
Cheadle's versatility is impressive of course, but Ejiofor is more interesting to watch after a while. As Petey's manager it's he who goes through the biggest changes, tonsorially and as it were morally: aside from changing moustaches and hair styles he goes from Oreo twerp to manipulative ass to full-fledged mensch. He socks Petey after the Carson debacle and they have a falling out, but they get back together and, though it's shown only in a single shot, we understand that he reconciles with his incarcerated brother too, whom he had treated rudely in an opening scene. A fine actor, Ejiofor is stunning in this movie. Even if her booty-shaking struts are standard issue, as Vernell Watson, Petey's faithful girlfriend, Taraji P. Henson (of Hustle and Flow) displays exceptional panache, especially in the early scenes. Cedric the Entertainer and Vlondie Curtis-Hall do good work as the other two black disc jockeys on WOL. But it can't be said that the movie itself has any particular distinction. This is yet another movie that comes down to a few good performances, and, as A.O. Scott has noted, "a fair number of funny, dirty jokes." As several writers have said, this is a potent reminder of a time when people listened to radio and when media voices talked back to power instead of being its mouthpiece. But you'll get a lot more of those funny, dirty jokes and insight into those times if you listen to a Richard Prior record.
Talk to Me could say more
Review by Chris Knipp
In the late Sixties a populist DC radio station called WOL was losing its audience when a newly released ex-con, Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. (Don Cheadle), who had done a radio show for the prisoners, talked himself into a gig and became a local icon at a time when black was beautiful and the black local audience had to have somebody who could keep it real. Petey became such a notable figure--he probably influenced many who followed--because he couldn't do it any other way. He's a natural, and his roughness came when it was the voice people needed to hear.
The middle man in this transformation of DC radio is the black program manager Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who sees Petey in prison when visiting his own inmate brother. Hughes is initially scornful, but Petey wins him over and he overrides the trepidations of the white station owner, E.G. Sonderling (Martin Sheen).
Talk to Me is lively and hilarious in its early segments when Cheadle is almost all ghetto schtick. Even if the essence of the gate-crashing episodes was already blown for anybody who saw the trailer; even though it's not much more than spiced-up sit-com material (Ella Taylor wrote, "I felt as though someone had trapped me in a time-warped episode of 'The Jeffersons'"), it's still outrageous fun, and as a straight man, Ejiofor is fine because he gives Dewey Hughes such authority. It's a laugh, maybe a relief, to see the staid and gentrified Don Cheadle--the African humanitarian; the college roommate of Adam Sandler; the boon companion of Clooney and Pitt and Damon--get a chance to act down and dirty, rude and black. But the movie works at this point because of foils, starting with Dewey. Ejiofor and Cheadle are great together. The early scenes are all sharp and well paced.
If only the movie could have maintained its opening level of energy and outrageousness, but it can't. At the center is the radio talk, and Petey's message is so simple that it doesn't go very far, not the way his on-the-air lines are written. Then Petey's story turns tragic. He's a small man whose rough life brought him down: he smoked and drank too much and despite his cockiness he had serious self doubts. Whether it was "being real" that led him away from rising beyond the radio station to become a national figure or just the same fear that hit him the first time he went on the air at WOL, Petey is no Richard Pryor. Why the comedy turns to a tragedy is a complicated internal story that might be developed better in a simpler, more articulate format--in a play. Cheadle does the decline of Petey Greene almost as well as he did the opening street-hustler schtick. You can hardly look at his face at times toward the end: its defiance has so clearly turned to defeat. But the movie feels lacking in unity.
Did this even have to be a bio-pic--does it contain enough material for one? If the director, Kaci Lemmons, and the writers, Michael Genet and Rick Fumuyiwa, had had something more particular to say, things might have gone differently. Instead the movie, despite some strong scenes and consistently good acting, is uneven in tone and focus and style. The cinematography is a jumble of clumsy crowd scenes, fake video, sit-com style interiors, and extreme close-ups. The tone, as suggested, rambles from cocky and outrageous to earnest and maudlin. As a biography Petey's story is shallow and anecdotal--and the historical background, despite the strong emotional passage on the assassination of Dr. King--Petey's moment of true leadership--lacks depth and specificity too. Mostly it's history through clothes and hairstyles.
As is the way of bio-pics, Petey's downfall is defined through a single episode, when Dewey Hughes gets him a chance to appear on the Johnny Carson Show and he completely blows it, embarrassing everyone. Petey almost runs off in the half hour before he's to go on camera, and we suspect he'll just get drunk, as he did before opening a James Brown concert right after the M.L. King assassination and DC riots he helped quell. When Hughes later declares that when he was growing up he learned everything from the Carson show about the world beyond the projects he lived in as a youth, that's another dead end in character development. And surely the downfall of Petey Greene was more complex than this.
Cheadle's versatility is impressive of course, but Ejiofor is more interesting to watch after a while. As Petey's manager it's he who goes through the biggest changes, tonsorially and as it were morally: aside from changing moustaches and hair styles he goes from Oreo twerp to manipulative ass to full-fledged mensch. He socks Petey after the Carson debacle and they have a falling out, but they get back together and, though it's shown only in a single shot, we understand that he reconciles with his incarcerated brother too, whom he had treated rudely in an opening scene. A fine actor, Ejiofor is stunning in this movie. Even if her booty-shaking struts are standard issue, as Vernell Watson, Petey's faithful girlfriend, Taraji P. Henson (of Hustle and Flow) displays exceptional panache, especially in the early scenes. Cedric the Entertainer and Vlondie Curtis-Hall do good work as the other two black disc jockeys on WOL. But it can't be said that the movie itself has any particular distinction. This is yet another movie that comes down to a few good performances, and, as A.O. Scott has noted, "a fair number of funny, dirty jokes." As several writers have said, this is a potent reminder of a time when people listened to radio and when media voices talked back to power instead of being its mouthpiece. But you'll get a lot more of those funny, dirty jokes and insight into those times if you listen to a Richard Prior record.