They Cloned Tyrone: A Review

Spoiler Alert Spoiler Alert

I don't consider what I write in this review to be spoilers, because I don't reveal how the film ends. However, I do discuss many plot elements.

All the way back in the early 70s, when my husband and I were dating, he opened a new world to me: Manhattan's 42nd Street movie houses (the legitimate movie houses). This was the Golden Age of Blaxploitation, and the audiences in those 42nd Street theaters were largely black. Short of throwing popcorn at the screen, theatergoers did everything and anything to engage with the show. They laughed, hollered, clapped, and hooted. They were an intrinsic part of the movie experience. I can't imagine what it would have been like to watch Shaft, or any iteration of Shaft, in another environment.

Boy do I wish I had seen They Cloned Tyrone with a 70s era, 42nd Street audience.

This film is a riot. To call it Blaxploitation is to acknowledge just one of its cultural roots. It is well-realized, rich and cinematically significant. Most importantly, it is entertaining. The synergy between the three lead actors is perfect. I can't imagine any other three actors delivering their lines more effectively than Teyonah Parris, John Boyega, and Jamie Foxx do.

In the film Teyonah Parris is Yo Yo, a prostitute (or, more accurately, a 'ho', as she refers to herself). John Boyega is Fontaine, a drug dealer, and Jamie Foxx is Slick Charles, a pimp. These three characters are the unlikely heroes who are called upon to defend their inner city community, the Glen (a little irony there--the writers never waste an opportunity for irony), against pure evil.

What is the nature of the evil that pervades the Glen? A nebulous cabal of scientists, bureaucrats, business leaders and government agents who use the neighborhood as a laboratory. The residents of the Glen are test subjects secretly used in experiments. The experiments include cloning and behavior modification.

I've already explained that one of the cultural roots for this film is Blaxploitation. There are so many more indirect and direct cultural references. One of the characters, Yo Yo (my favorite) keeps referring to Kevin Bacon in his tole as the Hollow Man. Slick describes the experiments of the cabal as Clockwork Orange stuff. References abound--X-Files, Nancy Drew...too many references to mention.

Grotesque though the experiments may be, the movie delivers nonstop humor throughout. For example, in one scene the intrepid trio is eating fried chicken in a fried chicken restaurant. Slick notices suddenly that Fontaine is laughing, and Slick has never, ever seen Fontaine laugh. Slick realizes there is something in the chicken that is making Fontaine laugh. Something that is making everyone in the restaurant laugh. As he looks around, he sees them, all of them laughing and happy as they consume fried chicken.

Slick knows then that the chicken has been treated with a powder that makes people laugh, that makes them feel good. As horrifying as this notion may be, the scene is still funny.

We learn, in the restaurant and in other places, that no aspect of Glen life is beyond the reach of the cabal. They are everywhere and they are watching all the time.

Yo Yo, Fontaine and Slick enter a suspicious church. There everyone is embracing, dancing, singing. Joy and exuberance fill the room. The minister is giving a very special sermon, one that tells parishioners not to worry about the gas bill, eviction, food. Just be happy, obey, and trust.

Our three improbable heroes realize that, as Slick observes, these congregants have been drinking the 'Kool-Aid'. In this case, the Kool-Aid appears in the form of adulterated grape juice.

The paranoia in the film mounts, and through it all the humor persists. The film's serious message is delivered with its own brand of Kool-Aid: humor.

Here, for instance, is a scene where the film makers manage to deliver a dose of the sinister and top it with a dollop of hilarity:

Yo Yo is kidnapped. She is tied down with restraints and is kept in a laboratory cage. There she is told with sadistic glee that she will be administered a new behavior-modifying formula, one that is super strong and will likely cause her to lose her mind. We see the lab assistants vigorously massage hair relaxer..tainted hair relaxer...into Yo Yo's quite copious locks. She passes out, and the lab assistants remove her restraints. They are taking her to the next phase of this experiment. Yo Yo jumps up from the table. She pulls her conditioner-soaked wig from her head and overcomes her tormentors. She has been feigning unconsciousness to throw her warders off their guard.

This is a perfect Blaxploitation scene. The white men are shown to be foolish dupes by the clever and powerful black woman. I can imagine how the 42nd Street audience would have reacted when Yo Yo pulls the wig off her head.

Of course every noble quest (and yes, the improbable trio do call their mission a quest) requires a physical embodiment of evil to be the foil. In this case, the face of evil is Nixon, played by Kiefer Sutherland. To my mind, this is the most enjoyable Kiefer Sutherland performance since he appeared years ago as a master vampire in Lost Boys.

Anyone with a low threshold for violence will not enjoy this movie. From the opening scene we are on notice that violence pervades the Glen. In that early scene we observe Fontaine deliberately running down a rival street dealer with his car. A child is in the car with Fontaine.

As the film progresses we learn that violence is essential to the cabal's experiments. Nixon explains that Fontaine, the drug dealer, and Slick, the pimp, are necessary elements in the community if it is to stay cut off from mainstream society.

Nixon explains that without drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes, two Starbucks would pop up right away. In other words, the Glen would be gentrified. The experiments could never be conducted in a gentrified neighborhood. They have to be conducted in a place nobody cares about.

To many viewers' ears the dialogue in this movie will seem crude and violent. This is a language that evolved in a particular culture, a culture that has been separated from mainstream society for generations.

Sex workers are intrinsic to the economy of the Glen. In the film, we see them at work. Some viewers might be upset by the work they do.

If I were discussing this film as a piece of writing I would say it is 'tight'. Every word carries its weight. There are no wasted scenes or conversations. From the beginning we are offered clues to the cabal's scheme. In one of the very first frames an old man, the neighborhood drunk, says to Fontaine, "It's in the water." We don't notice that line, unless we watch the film again (which I did). This old drunk is the seer in the film. He sees the truth. In saying, "It's in the water," he has stated the cabal's methodology: Their mind-altering drugs are everywhere, inescapable.

One theme that runs through the film, that actually underpins it, is the question of agency. The Cabal controls the Glen. It is cloning people so that they can continue to perform their 'essential' functions. Do the clones have agency? More than once in the film an actor refers to an 'existential' dilemma. It sounds funny, and is funny when such a profound question comes from a street hustler using street vernacular. But existential crisis is at the heart of the film.

Think of familiar films such as The Matrix, or Blade Runner. Questions of consciousness, of will, of reality are at the heart of those films, and of this film.

Ultimately, the drug dealer, the 'ho' and the pimp are going to have to make a decision, as one of them says, a Sophie's Choice decision. Are they going to accept living in an existential no man's land, or are they going to seize control of their lives, no matter the cost?

This is such a wonderful film. There is nothing serious about it, if a viewer wants to see it that way, or there is a profoundly eloquent message at its core. I highly recommend the movie to anyone who doesn't mind the language, the violence, and the sexual references.