Honey

Director: Bille Woodruff,
Starring: Jessica Alba, Lil' Romeo, Mekhi Phifer, David Moscow, Zachary Williams, Joy Bryant, Missy 'Misdemeanor' Elliott, Anthony Sherwood, Lonette McKee, Wes Williams, Judi Embden, Laurie Ann Gibson, Scott Neil, Alison Sealy-Smith, Jull Weber, ,

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DVD Review

Watching ‘Honey’ is a similar experience to watching a football match with crap teams. Both waste ninety minutes of your life staring at a screen watching talentless people sweating it out. Except with football, the goal celebrations are more entertaining than watching the choreographed moves of such a shit film like Honey.

It’s one of those films that makes you want to throw a metal object at the TV and destroy the character onscreen even though you know you will just be destroying your television. But it was worth it.

Regular readers of my reviews, fans, already know my film preference; hard, gritty and realistic to the core motherf***er. So why then, would I ask for a film with such a soft predictable plot, poor acting which makes you physically ill, and an unrealistic, cliché riddled, stereotypical portrayal of characters, setting and lifestyle? Well, watching Honey Daniels aka Jessica Alba from ‘Dark Angel’ writhing her body to infectious hip-hop beats was satisfying enough. She is fine. Sadly the same cannot be said about her acting and her dancing.

Wanting her to teach ballet, and claiming hip hop will get her nowhere, Honey’s mother looks down on her job as a dance choreographer at a youth centre in down town America (city not specified). As well as this, Honey holds down a second job as a bartender at a night club, and when she gets off she takes to the floor demonstrating her poorly put together dance moves that aren’t anything spectacular. Her token black friend however, if you can call her a friend, keeps giving Honey false hope telling her she’s “got skills” and she’s “got talent”.

When she meets famed video director Michael Ellis, she thinks she’s hit big and has finally made it as a professional dancer. The plot is not worth going into really, you’ve probably figured it out already. Twists and turns, well not really twists and turns, more of a straight-forward path, leads us to the climactic anti-climax; a charitable dance show that Honey has organised to raise money to buy some dilapidated building for hopeless street youth to get their groove on. Happy, smiley music just makes this scene’s dancing look stupid and laughable.

Where’s the hype? Where’s the funk? It’s not in this film what so ever. So many things are lacking from this film. Substantial fundamental things, such as good quality acting, believable acting, and as this is a dance movie, good quality dancing wouldn’t have gone a miss. This film makes me feel nothing. That’s worse than making me feel angry and/or frustrated like Lord of the Rings does because with those feelings, you can release them in an awesome fury of destruction and let it all out, you know? But with Honey, once it’s ended, you just sit there. And then turn off the TV. And then read the bible.

Special Features

At least this DVD is fruitful in bonus features. There are the usual deleted scenes and outtakes, which aren’t worth watching. There are also music videos, ‘the making of…’, commentaries and a step-by-step dance routine for kids under the age of 3 to follow and enjoy! All of which are not worth watching.

J.D. Lafrance

J.D. is a freelance writer who is currently doing research for a book on the films of Michael Mann. He likes reading anything written by Jack Kerouac, James Ellroy, J.D. Salinger, Harlan Ellison or Thomas Pynchon. J.D. is currently addicted to the T.V. series 24 and enjoys drinking a lot of Sprite. This is not a blatant plug for the beverage but if they ever decided to give him a lifetime supply he certainly wouldn’t turn them down.
view all DVD reviews by JD Lafrance

 

Rating: 36%

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