When The Bough Breaks Review
PG13: Violence, Sexuality/Partial Nudity, Thematic Elements, Some Disturbing Images, and Language
Sony, Screen Gems, Unique Features
1 Hr and 36 Minutes
Cast: Morris Chestnut, Regina Hall, Jaz Sinclair, Romany Malco, with Michael K. Williams, and Theo Ross
This is not going to be a regular review. The following you’re about to read is an open letter.
Dear Screen Gems,
Stop. Please stop with this new genre you’re popularizing being the black thriller. This has been a trend you’ve been doing since 2009 with “Obsessed” starring Idris Elba and Beyonce. It wouldn’t really count it as “black thriller” due to your antagonist being Ali Larter, a white actress. But I will count it because it was start of the trend you’ve been doing with your releases for the past three years.
With your September 2014 release, No Good Deed you’ve had Idris Elba invading the home of Taraji P. Henson and every single frame per second was cheap and degrading to both the audience and the actors within those films. With your September 2015 release The Perfect Guy, you used Morris Chestnut and an insane Michael Ealy pining after Sanaa Lathan It was both banal and degrading as well. I purposefully skipped that film because I knew I wasn’t going to miss much. But now in September 2016 you have released When the Bough Breaks withMorris Chestnut (also executive producing), Regina Hall, and little cute Jaz Sinclair who was rather one of my favorite minor characters in the film adaptation of Paper Towns last year. And now you have over sexualized this beautiful 22 year old actress to a bland and generic psychotic girl.
Why don’t you screen these films for critics or public for free? Is it so sad that a studio as big as yourselves have to bank in on both the public and the press. It truly isn’t fun for anyone except your target audience being mostly people of color. With every single one of these types of films a majority of em come out loving it. Here we didn’t. We laughed through and through of the amount of fucking absurdity the film goes through. Morris Chestnut is bound to do much better films as much as Regina Hall yet you degrade them to a generic and uninspiring script You have actor Romany Malco who has comedic charm and acting chops yet you have him here with nearly 7-10 lines of dialogue. Why are you wasting this poor man’s time. He may have gotten a paycheck but he could’ve starred in anything more inspiring.
There are bits and pieces of No Good Deed, The Perfect Guy, and Obsessed blended together to a new realm of who gives a fuck. Besides lack of story, there is a BET level style of filmmaking produced to a big screen when truly it belongs on a small. Chestnut has Rosewood on Fox, truly you couldn’t send this as a TV movie to there. But no, you love to cash in on the stupidity of Black people who either talks through the movie, stay on their phone, or hooting and hollering.
We see every predictable cliche from a mile away and its tiring. Yes Sinclair is attracted to Chestnut, but what if Sinclair was attracted to Hall. Hall is the reason this whole film happened and its all her fault. If you had the twist be Sinclair being attracted to Hall than Chestnut, it would’ve been more of an enticing experience. Yet sadly, you went for the cheap route. You have characters that you can’t follow or relate to. They are just two dimensional shallow rich people who just wants a baby so bad. They live in a huge ass house with a little guest house in its backyard. Surly they couldn’t adopt a baby.
Though this film is as bland as a slice of bread, you managed to give me a cinematic experience that couldn’t been more unintentionally hysterical in a long time. Due to your careless continuity of story such as having Theo Ross’ character given a restraining order against Sinclair by Chestnut only for Sinclair to visit him in a restaurant four scenes later like the scene about the restraining order never happened.
With all of these faults this movie has, I want to thank you for making a black thriller so bad, it gave me the best comedic experience I’ve had in a long time. I’m not asking for another one of these for 2017, but I have a great time watching this. I can see it was made for a certain demographic, but you could’ve tried a little harder. By the film’s ending, I was appalled of how cheap and open ended it was that it gave me the most biggest laughs I’ve had in a theater. That laughter was followed with a “fuck you” from myself and 3 several people around me. We as a general audience has had enough with your same ol same ol black thriller films that are progressively getting worse. Please take this letter into consideration and try much better next time. And when black actors say Oscars So White, they star in bullshit film like this. Do us a favor, please stop.
Sincerely,
Rendy Jones
LAST STATEMENT: Rock a bye bullshit on the tree top and when the wind blows the production will flop, and When The Bough Breaks, the production will fall, and down will come bullshit, bullshit and all.
Rating: 0.5/5 | 13%
Super Scene: Jon had enough of Anna
