"The Cookout" is one of those movies where you find

yourself muttering, "How does stuff like this get made?" A

feeble script, a first time, ham-fisted director and cameos from

Queen Latifah, Danny Glover and Farrah Fawcett that are truly

embarrassing. Are these three celebrities running around with

their jackets over their heads? They should be. This is an embarassment!

That's pretty bad when you find yourself embarrassed for

the flickering images on the big screen. Even I wanted to cover

my head and duck out of this one. Still, I felt that I owed to

the general public to sit it out, to see every bit of schtick

this disaster of a film had to offer.

Hey, I'll even tell you who done it!

Imagine an old beach movie script being sold for about $30.

It's then reworked into a suburban comedy of errors concerning

a number one pro basketball draft, a new house, a gold digging

girlfriend, snooty neighbors who cower at the site of black people,

and a series of bad relatives who show up at my man's front

door lookin' all ratty and what not.

Every character is a stereotype. The actors, imcluding the well

known ones, would even look bad in an old John Waters movie.

Waters could have taken this junk and given his viewers a legitimate

reason to sit and stare agog at the screen. This is Ray Dennis

Steckler bad. This is Hershall Gordan Lewis bad. This is just

bad, O.K?

I just sat there shaking my head every time Danny Glover popped

up with his obliviously white wife, Farrah Fawcett. Neither one

of them seemed to have a clue about comic acting, timing, looking

in a mirror! As for the Queen, well, I don't think this

little role is quite in the same universe as say, "Chicago."

Subplots, if you can call them that, involve two mincing homosexuals,

because no gay person would act that spastic. There are two black

homeboys, hoodlums, rejects; I'm not quite sure what their

back story is. The dumber of the two is so horrendous an actor,

I can't even put it into words. Oh wait, I just did. Two

other "cousins" are terminal fatboy potheads who eat

everything in site as they mumble and laugh at the proceeds.

The father of the pro-ball draftee sums it up at the beginning

of the cookout, here on out known as the yawn-fest. He says something

deep or touching or lame about the three f's, "fun,

food, and family." It's a nice gesture wasted on a

bunch of idiots. The three f's for this film should be flop,

fraud and failure. F.

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