Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Paris Barclay

Starring: Various members of the Wayans family, Tracey Cherelle Jones, Darrel Heath and Helen Martin

From: Miramax

First off, I am posting this at a very bizarre time for me as a few hours from now I’ll be at Walt Disney World (the Magic Kingdom in particular) with some members of my family. After Thursday I believe things will return to normal for me.

I saw this movie… via a 4K AI upscale that someone did and uploaded to their YouTube account! As of now not too many accounts do this although that could certainly become more prevalent in the future. One day in the future I’ll discuss how some people colorize black and white films AND have it play 60fps & how that looks more awkward than anything else… at least this isn’t that. Instead, it’s a simple upscaling and that made this look rather swell; besides having watched this before way back in the day, someone giving THIS such treatment did make me chuckle.

These days, I hope it isn’t awkward that a dumb white guy like me laughed at a parody of “Hood movies” devoted to Black people dealing with inner-city life. Then again, on the picture’s Wikipedia page it notes that each main character is based on someone from several different Hood films. Yeah, archetypes were a thing, although Boyz in the Hood and Menace II Society (the two spoofed the hardest here) are well worth watching no matter your race or ethnicity. 

The general plot is that Ashtray moves into South Central Los Angeles and experiences various adventures with his pal Loc Dog that includes a romantic relationship & an ex-con targeting him. It’s definitely an R-rated film and there are crass moments, but it never became grossly vulgar or unappealing to me. Admittedly the movie feels uneven at times yet there’s a variety of laughs (from a blunt-smoking grandma who was hilarious to MESSAGE!) and there are even some deep digs-such as poking fun at how Laurence Fishburne was barely older than Cuba Gooding, Jr. when the former played the latter’s dad in Boyz. Heck, there were some moments that I thought were from other 90’s films seen in my past.

It's more a series of skits than an actual plot yet the end product was as much a good time as I recalled from all those years ago.