Review of Wood, The

Introduction

Three friends: Mike (Omar Epps), Roland (Taye Diggs) and Slim (Richard T. Jones), who grew up together in Inglewood, a rough borough of Los Angeles (nicknamed ‘The Wood’ of the title) are brought back together under the guise of Roland’s wedding and suffer a severe bout of ‘Nostalgic-trip-down-memory-lane’ syndrome. A notorious terminal illness that strikes down more that a dozen Hollywood films each year and to which there is only one form of treatment: lengthy flashbacks to childhood awkwardness.

That said, without a driveby shooting or free-base dealer in sight, Rick Famuyiwa’s film is clearly trying to avoid the ‘Boyz-in-the-Hood’ ghetto-exploitation pictures Hollywood studios made a fortune from in the mid-90s. Famuyiwa is at pains to remind us that not all the residents of minority ghettos grow up to be opportunistic criminals, gang-bangers or crack whores. ‘The Wood’ manages to avoid predictable accusations of tokenism by keeping on the straight and narrow, with warm performances and a refreshingly light-hearted and unsanctimonious feel.

Video

A good anamorphic transfer that showcases the low-rent attempts at virtuosity by director Famuyiwa that is more like a showcase in pretty bad lighting and by-the-book camerawork. Oh how it backfires.

Audio

A clear and clean 5.1 surround track. This being an MTV production, its unsurprising there’s plenty of music of the smooth R&B sounds and funky hip-hop variety.

Features

A trailer. And yes, thank you Paramount, you excel yourselves again: nothing else. Boo.

Conclusion

The childhood scenes are quite good, if a little quaint in their gratuitous ‘insecurity’. There’s an acute sense of teenage embarrassment, even if the handling of it is a little ham-fisted. It doesn’t always work: an ‘American Pie’ style cherry-popping montage is posturing and tiresome when the rest of the movie is heart-felt and spirited. However a unpolished romance between teenage Mike (Sean Nelson) and Alicia (Malinda Williams) more than makes up for it.

Despite the frequency of the flashbacks, the film never establishes a coherent emotional connection between the two periods: as kids without any discernable talent or ambition, we’re left in the dark as to why these guys succeeded where so many have succumbed to negative societal pressure; and the coming-of-age adolescence has little to do with Roland’s current fear of commitment above mere triviality (his seeming inability to claim a high-school sweetheart.) So, even if this episodic film never really comes together, there’s still plenty to enjoy along the way, particularly the onscreen charisma of Diggs, Epps and Jones.

Even if the film does break free from the depressing cliches of ghetto-gangster pics, it gets absorbed in the contrived talk-heavy construct of the mainstream rom-com; from the weird ‘Alfie’ style recitation to camera in the opening scene to the tedium of the eternal love conclusion. There’s plenty of charm and amusement to be had in this lightweight movie, but ultimately, by the end the whole thing manages to seem completely superfluous.