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'Next Day Air' fails to deliver laughs
Movie Review: Next Day Air
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
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PLAY OFFICIAL TRAILER
out of 4 stars.
It’s easy to see what Next Day Air aspires to. It’s a twist on slacker-stoner comedies of the Seth Rogen kind by way of an ensemble cast of African-Americans and Hispanics. The film also takes a cue from British writer-director Guy Ritchie’s comic-crime escapades, mixing bloody violence with its drug and idler humor.
The botched bank robbery that opens Next Day Air makes the link to Ritchie gangster comedies Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Brody and Guch (Mike Epps and Wood Harris respectively) blow into a bank with guns brandished. Instead of stealing money, though, a miscommunication leaves them with a bag of surveillance tapes.
Incompetence being a way of life for Brody and Guch, it’s a wonder they’ve lived as long as they have. Succeeding scenes show Brody compensating for his stupidity through a cold-blooded willingness to commit heinous deeds that, more than likely, are beside the point anyway.
Donald Faison’s Leo, an employee for a UPS-style company, is one of the film’s other underachievers. Leo doesn’t just smoke pot on the job, he cops on the job from street-corner dealers in daylight hours.
Complaints from customers that Leo smells like weed get him called into his boss’ office. Ms. Jackson (Debbie Allen) tells Leo he’s just inches away from being fired. It would be better if he gets fired than she, she explains, even if she is his mom.
Rapper-actor Mos Def co-stars as Leo’s co-worker. Def, at least, has a funny face, which makes the fact that his character, someone every bit as irresponsible as Leo, makes employee of the month, almost amusing.
Next Day Air has a fatal handicap. There are no characters worthy of sympathy. Leo, Brody, Guch and the rest aren’t worth rooting for, unless you’re a fan of dope-head thugs and killers.
Thanks to Leo’s bungling, the already desperate Brody and Guch get pitted against the young Puerto Rican couple next door, Jesus and his girlfriend, Chita, as well as Jesus’ drug lord boss, Bodega. Yasmin Deliz’s demonstrative Chita borrows from feisty, breakout girlfriend roles famously played by Marisa Tomei and Rosie Perez, but Chita is no Mono Lisa Vito or Gloria Clemente.
What happens before the violent finale is bad, but the splattering to limping concluding scene is even worse. Obviously, Next Day Air doesn’t deliver.
