My first thought about A Day Late and a Dollar Short was, ‘a long time ago a good film could have been made with Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer and, in a pinch, even Whoopi Goldberg.’ Now, ten years is a long time. In fact, it’s a lifetime; a Lifetime Original Movie, that is — and therein lies the problem.
Like many a Lifetime production, this one is overburdened with clunky exposition. Narration invariably is, even under the best circumstances, flaccid, sloppy writing — and you know the circumstances are far from ideal when the protagonist’s voice-over borders at times on play-by-play commentary.
For example, when we see Paris (Anika Noni Rose) popping a little, white pill, followed by her mother, Viola (Goldberg), nagging (as she’s wont to do) on the soundtrack: “what she doesn’t need is any more of those little, white pills,” and then adding, “what she does need is a good orgasm.” That’s TMI, as the kids say nowadays. Who wants to listen to a mother discussing her daughter’s sex life (or lack thereof)? Hell, who wants to listen to Whoopi Goldberf discussing anyone’s sex life?
At one point Viola says, “just because [second daughter of three] Janelle [Kimberly Elise] doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t mean I’m going to stop talking.” That’s the story of this movie right there; Viola talks too much about things we don’t want to or even need to hear.
Take Paris’s pill habit; an opportunity to delve into it will arise that at least has a setup (as opposed to simply being laid out by an omniscient narrator), even if it is somewhat contrived (the “landscape artist” whom Viola wants to fix Paris up with just happens to have “traveled a long way down that road” himself, and can conveniently tell “over-the-counter from the hard stuff” at sight) and lacks a proper payoff (Paris’s addiction, if you can call it that, is resolved with a throwaway shot of her marching, head held up high, out of a place called “Wildflower – For Peace and Wellness”).
It gets worse, though. Above, I likened Viola’s narration to play-by-play commentary. As its name implies, the latter is a staple of sports broadcasting. Incidentally, the script is not above resorting to cold, hard stats whenever ham-fisted exposition just won’t do.
There’s Viola talking about her recidivist son thus: “Teachers said Lewis [Phifer] is a genius, I.Q. of 146 … but I’ve never seen him use it.” Neither does the audience, for that matter. I mean, I get it; there’s a certain poignancy in an emotionally-stunted intellectual (see Hunting, Good Will). However, implying that a character reads Sartre does not automatically make him a scholar. Phifer is a fine actor who can undoubtedly convey intelligence in a street-smarts sort of way; director Stephen Tolkin truly did him a bad turn by saddling him with this genius-level IQ Informed Attribute bullshit while still typecasting him as a soft-hearted semi-thug.
And then there’s Paris’s own 16-year-old son As You Knowing his mother: “I’ve been varsity since sophomore year. I got a 4.1 average” (I guess he inherited his uncle’s theoretical intelligence). This is brought up because Paris is worried that her son is spending too much time with his girlfriend Meagen (Alannah Copetti) when he should be focusing on his academic future.
The last straw comes when Paris catches her son and Meagen (and yes, that’s how the credits spell her name) in the backseat of her car. Paris’s son’s name, by the way, is Dingus (Jahmil French). For real. This dumb bitch gave her kid a name that means ‘dim-witted,’ ‘silly,’ and ‘foolish,’ and now she’s surprised that he’s acting up?
Dingus claims that his fooling around with Meagen is “not that big of a deal;” Paris counters that “it will be when she’s pregnant.” Yada yada yada Dingus does knock up Meagen. That’s actually not unexpected; after all, the screenplay features both physical and sexual abuse of minors, so why not teen pregnancy?
What I did not see coming is that Dingus was right; it really isn’t a big deal. Everything that Paris told Dingus and Meagen about how he was “not ready to be playing house,” and that she should leave him along “so he can fulfill his potential,” turns out to be right on the money, but she doesn’t even get the satisfaction of an ‘I told you so.’
Moreover, when Paris advises Dingus, not unreasonably so all things considerd, to “take care of this” lest he ruin his life, Dingus’s pig-headed rejoinder is to note that he’s older than Paris when Paris had him, and to ask his mother “you wish you would have taken care of me?” I don’t know about Paris, but right about now I’m kinda wishing she had.
In the end, the implication is that, as with Paris’s quote-unquote addiction, Dingus and Meagen and Dingus Jr. are going to be just fine and will live happily ever after, because there isn’t anything more to kids raising a kid than there is to kicking an opioid habit via an offscreen stint in rehab.
And I haven’t even gotten to the remaining members of this stereotypical Proud Black Family — nor will I ever, because life’s too short and I’ve already wasted more than enough precious time on this stupid fucking nonsense. Suffice it to say that as bad as this movie is, I actually (more or less) sat through it, so maybe I’m the dingus.
Leave a comment