‘They Cloned Tyrone’
Juel Taylor makes his directorial debut in the ambitious yet uneven “They Cloned Tyrone.” At its best this wild genre mashup feels like what we would get if the Coen brothers made a 1970s blaxploitation movie. Those (and several other) cool influences are impossible to miss. At its shakiest the film has a hard time maintaining any kind of consistent tone. That proves to be more of a problem than you might think.
The film (written by Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier) constantly bounces back and forth between super seriousness to over-the-top absurdity. This isn’t always a big deal. But in “They Cloned Tyrone” it ends up affecting everything from the story, the characters, and even the sometimes clever yet sometimes on-the-nose messaging.
Something that doesn’t miss the mark is the crackling chemistry between the film’s three stars: John Boyega, Teyonah Parris and Jamie Foxx. All three embody their characters with a streetwise panache. Yet it’s the distinctions between them that make them an interesting trio. The writing doesn’t always help them, at times relying so much on petty profanity-laced bickering and babbling that they almost become caricatures. But Boyega, Parris and Foxx are crafty talents and they elevate the material often.
The movie begins on a pretty serious note by introducing us to Fontaine (Boyega), a small-time drug dealer who has his hands full fending off rival neighborhood gangs and collecting money from his non-paying customers. One such customer is a hilariously decked-out pimp named Slick Charles (played by Foxx who looks like he stepped right out of a certain flashback sequence in “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” — fans to that hilarious 1988 film will know what I mean).
Slick Charles runs his sleazy operation out of a dirt-cheap motel called The Royal. There he’s constantly clashing with his strongwilled worker Yo-Yo (Parris) who claims she’s ready to retire so she can go to Memphis and find her “a real man.” Fontaine goes to Slick Charles’ motel room to squeeze out
some money owed. But as he’s leaving he’s brutally gunned down by a rival gang member.
So Fontaine is dead, right? Well not so fast. Suddenly we see him wake up in bed and once again start his daily routine (à la “Groundhog Day”). But when he shows up to collect his money from Slick Charles, he scares the self-proclaimed “1995 Players Ball Pimp of the Year” who witnessed Fontaine’s murder the night before. Slick Charles tries to explain what happened but Fontaine doesn’t buy it. He finally convinces Fontaine to go find Yo-Yo who can corroborate his story.
Without giving too much away, the three become neighborhood gumshoes, eventually uncovering a nefarious (and utterly ludicrous) plot against their predominantly Black inner-city community being carried out by an evil white extension of the U.S. government. At least that’s the best way I can describe the film’s baddies. It’s hard to say for sure because the secret “scientific” agency is never explained all that well. Regardless, it sets up a pretty zany story that attempts to mix serious emotion and messaging with an utterly preposterous scenario that goes well beyond the cloning in the title.
To its credit, the movie does have its funny moments that work well in large part thanks to Foxx. The comedy really increases the very moment he hits the screen. Over time the humor does take a backseat as Taylor tries to turn his potty-mouthed Three Stooges into characters with a (somewhat) serious side. But even then we still get some inherently funny bits that flow naturally out of the story. It’s so tempting to toss out some examples but I’ll leave those for you all to find for yourselves.
Yet blending and managing tone is a tricky task and frankly “They Cloned Tyrone” is all over the map. The movie clearly wants to bring together a number of obvious influences and it’s that love for genre and style that gives the movie a certain allure. But it jumps around too much and doesn’t always seem to know what to do with its characters (take Kiefer Sutherland’s paper-thin villain whose only purpose is to dump some exposition and shoot a few bullets). It turns out to be a nagging thorn in the film’s side that keeps it from being all that it could be.