Blue-collar Wizard of Oz is a modern fairy tale
Patti Cake$ 15 cert, 109 min
Dir Geremy Jasper Starring Danielle Macdonald, Bridget Everett, Siddharth Dhananjay, Mamoudou Athie, Cathy Moriarty, Mccaul Lombardi, Sahr Ngaujah
On paper, the heroine of Patti Cake$ – Patricia Dombrowski, aka Killa-p – looks like she’s auditioning for a hybrid of every film you’ve ever seen about a talented musician scraping themselves up from nothing. Like Eminem in 8 Mile, she’s a white rapper from a no-hope, blue-collar background, raised by a single mom (Bridget Everett) who’s barely holding it together. Like Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray, she’s heavyset, a magnet for verbal abuse on a daily basis, and won’t let the b------grind her down.
The touchstones in this Sun dance certified crowd-please r continue to come thick and fast. There’s the demo tape daringly proffered to an industry bigwig – here a terrifyingly aloof New Jersey rapper called The O-Z (Sahr Ngaujah) – which could make or break Patti’s aspirations. There are the rap battles, inevitably bringing all their movie precedents to mind, in which one of Patti’s opponents calls her “the white Precious” and she zings back at him with jibes about STDS. She’s called “Dumbo” by every catcalling jerk driving by. Just wait till they see this elephant fly.
Sometimes it feels as though Patti, a gifted lyricist fighting for the street respect she’s never enjoyed, can hardly turn around without the film pinning another movie reference to her chest. The fact that she pulls through is thanks to a stonking performance from Danielle Macdonald, a 25-year-old Australian actress who learned to rap for the role. Besides, the trump card that writerdirector Geremy Jasper stashes up his sleeve, homage-wise, is the least urban or contemporary he could have picked. It’s The Wizard of Oz. Patti’s fantasies of a better life lead her down a yellow brick road of sorts, and when she pulls the curtain back, there’s The O-Z behind it. If the Oz nods are there for any specific purpose, they’re to show us that Patti Cake$ wants to be seen as a modern fairytale – and like any Dorothy, Patti is only able to brave the journey to self-realisation with some help from her friends.
Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay) is her right-hand man, a skinny Asian lad whose gestural appropriation of rap culture sits hilariously at odds with his day job, behind the checkout at the local pharmacy. For help producing their demo, they turn to Basterd (Mamoudou Athie), who performs with cacophonous fury as “Antichrist” on stage, but broods silently off it, a cycling loner living in a weird, abandoned cabin bedecked with all his equipment.
One of the musical highlights arrives when Patti and Jheri visit him, along with Patti’s crumbling sourpuss of a gran (Cathy Moriarty), and all four of them lay down the basis for a storming hit record, seemingly out of the blue.
It’s the mother-daughter relationship which Jasper eventually bets the house on, helped by a careerreinventing performance from Everett – singer, comedy-cabaret performer, and now serious actress – in the role of Barb. Her own chance at the big-time evaporated years before, when she got pregnant, and now she’s a boozing wreck – imagine Amy Schumer belting her way through karaoke torch-songs after a failed career. Of course she comes to Patti’s showdown performance, and of course she comes in late, and makes her way right up to the stage in teary wonder, and even takes the mike.
Knock it if you must, but this is the film Patti Cake$ is to the core – unashamedly entertaining, and particularly unashamed of using every old trick in the book to get there.