Crude jokes spoil latest ‘Shaft’ sequel
The latest “Shaft,” which adds a new generation to the mix, is not what you might expect.
It’s not gritty or raw or even attempting to be all that cool. Instead it maintains intoxicatingly upbeat sitcom-style energy, with gentrification jokes, generational jabs (mostly at the expense of millennials) and Samuel L. Jackson, reprising his nearly 20-yearold role as John Shaft II, seemingly having a blast everystepoftheway.
It’s not that it’s sanitized or without violence. There are guns — many of them. But this is the kind of movie that will play The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” during a big shootout, and not in a Scorsese kind of way.
It’s hard not to be on board with the liveliness and the generally sharp writing.
The film starts off in 1989 Harlem. Regina Hall (Maya) is dressing down Shaft for his reckless life choices, and he’s not really having it, but their conversation gets interrupted by an ambush that almost kills Maya and the baby we find out later is in the back seat. So Maya moves upstate to the suburbs with little John Shaft Jr. (or J.J.) to raise him away from danger (and his father).
J.J. grows up to be a nice young fellow and an M.I.T. grad who wears slim-fitting jeans and shirts buttoned all the way to the top and works for the FBI (aka “the man”). He’s played, charmingly, by Jessie T. Usher.
Themysteriousdeathof his friend, and his inability to investigate on his own, leads him to his dad’s office to ask for help. He gets more than he bargained for in terms of late-game fatherly advice on how J.J. is failing to be a man and, specifically, ablackmanworthyofthe Shaft name.
So this odd couple sets off to solve a murder and, you presume, learn some lessons from one another as well. All well and good, right? Not exactly.
Director Tim Story and writers Alex Barnow and Kenya Barris made the unforgivable choice to imbue this story not just with a generational divide, but with all the antiquated worldviews from the “good old days” that they could fit in to two hours.
How something as offensive as “Shaft’s” stream of gay panic jokes and misogynistic humor can make it to the screen in 2019 is beyond comprehension and a shame, considering the movie has so much else going for it, including a delightful late-game appearance by the original Shaft, Richard Roundtree.