BOOTY CALL

BOOTY CALL is a 79 minute commercial for safe sex. Crude and rude, it is a tedious sketch comedy about two African-American friends, Bunz (Jamie Foxx) and Rushon (Tommy Davidson), who are looking to get lucky with their dates that evening. Rushon has been dating Nikki for 7 weeks, and they still havenít gone all the way. Bunz is merely desperate.

The movie starts out with the sophisticated Rushon speaking to the street-wise and low class Bunz about his date. Bunz is worried that Lysterine will not be ìfine.î Rushon tells him that she is. Rushon, himself, has been dating Lysterineís neighbor Nikki (Tamala Jones). Rushon figures that any friend of Nikkiís ought to be fine, too. The four meet at a Chinese restaurant, and Bunz is not disappointed. His stupid manner is immediately offensive to Lysterine, but she soon warms to his charms, and as dinner winds down, the men begin to think that they might have a chance to fornicate.

Back in Nikkiís apartment, the mood is set and the couples begin to pair off. As both men begin to get amorous, Nikki demands that the men put on condoms. Rushon and Bunz head off into the night several times to buy condoms and experience unplanned mishaps and challenges. They are getting frustrated, and their women are losing the mood. On their final journey out, Rushon accidentally gets shot in the leg, and the four go to a hospital, where further misadventures occur. Rushon almost gets castrated, and he fights with Nikki, while Bunz delivers a baby and gets a little closer to Lysterine.

This movie is very offensive. It has many, many obscenities. As Bunz is ìmaking itî with Lysterine, he impersonates famous black men like Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson. These words pervert and defame the character of these leaders. In one scene, a Christian judge rebukes the boys for trying to fornicate. He tells them safe sex is abstinence. He tells them fornication is not Godís way, but, in the next scene, we see that the judge is a hypocrite, ready to go out and fornicate, too. The judge is right: safe sex is no sex, but perhaps the filmmaker wanted to say that all men are subject to temptation and that all men will fall, so they must use a condom. The truth is that it is possible and right to abstain. Many Christian men and women have kept themselves pure while waiting for marriage.

As a sketch comedy with repeated situations, it seems like a late night TV comedy routine. As the men go out on their quest, their stupidity becomes their foil. They are bumbling fools, and it is a mystery why the women would want to be intimate with them. BOOTY CALL shows uncontrolled men and women who get themselves into trouble because they cannot control their passions. A nice night of dinner and card playing turns into a trip to the hospital. Safe sex is still fornication, and so no matter how well intentioned this dumb movie may be, it offers no solution for those struggling with sexual temptation.