In today’s society where vulgarity has become a part of everyday conversation, where it consists completely of words you don’t want your parents or grandparents to hear, “Booty Call” nevertheless represents some kind of that reality. Roger Ebert admitted in his review, “This is the raunchiest sex comedy I can remember-- sort of an "Animal House Grosses Out.'' Did I laugh? Sure. Did I recount some of the more incredible episodes to friends? You bet. Is the movie any good? Does goodness have anything to do with it? I walk out of movies like this wishing my parents had sent me to more concerts instead of letting me read Mad magazine. I'm astonished at some of the things I laugh at. But laugh I do.”
The story is about two couples on a double date. Rushon and Nikki, played by Tommy Davidson and Tamala Jones, have been dating for a while. Rushon gets Nikki to make his friend (Jamie Foxx) ready with her across-the-hall neighbor, Lysterine (Vivica Fox). Lysterine (“That’s spelled with a ‘y’, not an ‘I’”) is at first not into the dreadlocked Bunz (“That tarantula-head fool looks like Predator”).
However, her girlfriend talks her into going with her for the evening. It is a long and very busy night (the usually understated MPAA says “non-stop sexuality, including sex-related dialogue and crude humor, and strong language”). During the runtime, both couples show great desire to get in the bed, but the scenes aren’t detailed.
Actually, they’re detailed, but not about making love – the details are in the difficulties, the alterations, and what goes wrong or sometimes even right.
For example, look at Lysterine’s strange turn-on. She likes to make love while her partner impersonates Jesse Jackson, and Bunz is happy to please with highlights from several speeches. (For afterplay, he cools down with Bill Cosby.) Lysterine is also into different crazy tools, props and costumes. There are times, when she enters the bedroom, that Bunz looks like a man about to have a proctoscopic examination.
“Safe sex” is the catchphrase of both women, and this leads to a scene where Rushon fights with Nikki’s dog over a condom. Rushon wins. That’s funny, but even funnier (and possibly unscripted) is the way the dog continues for the rest of the scene to jump desperately in the air, barking and snapping at the prize that is just out of his reach.
This is some dog. It also is nice in the funniest single scene in the movie, where it licks Lysterine’s toes under the table, and Lysterine thinks it’s Bunz. Ebert said, “Later, Bunz makes a similar mistake, also involving the dog, which I will not recount here.”
One of the movie’s good parts is its sincere fairness of the genders. This is not about desperate creep men and female victims. All four characters are equally matched and equally enthusiastic. And all four have a healthy excitement about making love. Ebert noted, “Although the movie is a wall-to-wall exercise in bad taste, it somehow retains a certain innocence; it challenges and sometimes shocks, but for me at least it didn't offend, because its motives were so obviously good-hearted. I was reminded of Mel Brooks' defense of "The Producers" (1968): "This movie rises below vulgarity.''” Example: Toward the end of the movie, Rushon finds himself in a hospital, about to be operated on. Through a funny confusion in the charts, his minor surgery is upgraded to the removal of his privates. Anesthetized and unable to speak, he looks in fear at the surgeon’s preparations. His friends can’t discourage the grim doctor from his surgery. Finally, they get told the magic words that will stop any operation in the middle: “He doesn’t have any insurance!” (The pre-op preparations lead, a little later, to a really inspired recycling of the famous line, “Not only am I the president – I’m a client!”) Ebert said, “To evaluate this movie, I find myself falling back on my timetested generic approach. First, I determine what the movie is trying to do, and what it promises its audiences they will see. Then, I evaluate how successful it is, and whether audiences will indeed see the movie they've been promised and enjoy it.”
“Booty Call” was advertised as a harsh exercise in vulgarity. It is. Ebert admitted, “I laughed. So I must, to be honest and consistent, rate it accordingly--three stars.” In a time where so many movies have no taste at all, a movie in bad taste is at least soaring under the real nature.
Now I know that this movie wasn’t well-received when it first came out, but when you watch it now, you can appreciate it for what it is, a raunchy comedy. This is one of the funniest movies I have seen, and I laughed a lot throughout the film. Check it out and have an enjoyable time.
Look out next week to see what the next comedy I will look at in “Black History Movie Month.”
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