Woo (1998) Reviews

• Very basic film with few laughs but plenty of racial clichés

  bob the moo2003-05-25

  Tim is a shy man who hasn't been with a woman in quite a while. Woo is a woman who is looking for her perfect man but has been played once too often. When a friend hooks them both up on a date things go wrong from the start when Woo feels that Tim is only after one thing. After that she drags him through a series of misadventures as he gradually loses patience. I must admit to have taped this because of the presence of the lovely Jada Pinkett Smith. Ironically I watched this on the day that The Matrix Reloaded opened in the UK – I wonder will she be boasting about her presence in this film now that she has real hits under her belt. The plot here is almost an `urban' rehash of Blind Date, with Woo leading the mild mannered Tim to despair. However the majority of the film is poor and not very funny. The plot is very thin, so thin that it needs separate little subplots for the other characters just to sustain the running time. Sadly neither of the two `friends' subplots are any good at all and are either stupid or obvious. The main `romance' between Woo and Tim is badly translated. At no time did you wish for these two to be a couple, even the `slow music during a thoughtful taxi ride' moment seemed to come out of nowhere and indicate that the film would be ended soon. To be honest other than Woo's body I could see no reason any man would want to be with her – certainly Tim could do a lot better, which kinda goes against the point of the film. Their episodic adventures raised a few small laughs for me but not enough to justify the time. Pinkett-Smith is OK. Her looks are spoilt by a lipstick colour that doesn't suit her face and a general attitude that alienated her from an audience that she needed to keep. Davidson is better despite playing the same sort of character as he did in Booty Call, he has more of a knack for comedy and his character was easier to emphasis with than Woo. The support cast are all pretty poor whether it is Chappelle demanding his wife dress as a `chicken ho' or Martin, Heath etc being `dogs'. Cameos from LL Cool J and Foxy Brown do nothing to liven it up. Overall I am not against urban comedies although many of them do tend to fall into lazy cliché that would border on the racist were they not produced for the very groups they stereotype. Here I had low expectations but was still let down., Very few laughs, very basic plotting and such poor characterisation that it was hard to like anyone in the film. Best avoided and very probably being tippexed off Pinkett-Smith's CV as I type this.

• Pretty Dull Viewing

  JamesHitchcock2005-07-12

  The film is set among New York's black community; all the main characters are black, with white actors seen only in minor roles. (Is this revenge for the way in which Hollywood used to discriminate against black actors?) The title character Woo (this is presumably a nickname although we never get to find out her real name) is a beautiful young woman who is having difficulties in her love-life, and accepts a blind date with a young man named Tim, largely because he is a Virgo. (Her astrologer has told her that she is fated to find romance with someone of that particular star sign). This is an example of that classical romantic comedy plot, love blossoming between two people of different temperaments. The shy, diffident Tim, a law clerk, is having even more difficulties with his love-life than is Woo; he lacks a social life to such an extent that his friends nickname him Macaulay Culkin (because he's always home alone). Woo, by contrast, is an outgoing, extrovert party animal, and is keen to take Tim out for a night on the town. As this is a romantic comedy, we know that there will be a happy ending; the interest of such films lies in the route taken to reach such an ending. Unfortunately, in this case the route taken is an uninteresting one. We quickly realise just why Woo, despite her physical beauty, has not had great success with men; the woman is spoilt, wilful and a prize bitch, the sort of person who (in one of the film's most manic scenes) wrecks an Italian restaurant after a trivial quarrel with a waiter. It hardly seems credible that Tim would tolerate such an annoying and unlikeable character, let alone conclude that she was the love of his life. He is evidently even more frustrated than we realise. I am not sure whether the problems with Woo's character are the fault of the scriptwriter or of the actress, Jada Pinkett Smith. Probably a mixture of both. The film has been criticised for allegedly perpetuating stereotypical images of young black males. The character of Tim, in fact, seems to have been designed to get as far away from these stereotypes as possible- he is quiet, middle-class and lacking in self-confidence, especially where women are concerned. The other male characters, however, are written in a stereotypical way, presumably deliberately so in order to accentuate the contrast with the untypical Tim. They are loud, outgoing and streetwise, sexist in their attitudes towards women and prejudiced towards gays. These characters did, however, provide some of the more amusing scenes, which mostly had little to do with the main plot, like the scene in the gay bar where one of the men mistakes transvestites for real women (an old joke, going back at least to "Crocodile Dundee"), or the "Chickie Ho" scene where a man makes his girlfriend dress up as a chicken while making love. (She, unfortunately, is allergic to the feathers and can't stop sneezing). Unfortunately, amusement is in short supply, and the film as a whole makes for pretty dull viewing, a sort of romantic comedy version of those old blaxploitation action films from the seventies. 4/10

• Awful.

  MovieAddict20162005-06-18

  "Woo" is about a woman (named, of all things, Woo!) who goes on a blind date with a guy who hasn't been with a woman in a long time. Woo has been through a lot with men and gets the feeling this new guy just wants one thing, so she leads him on a series of late-night adventures a la Scorsese's "After Hours." This movie is L-A-M-E lame. It's packed with all sorts of awful dialogue, poor performances, racial stereotypes (including the big fat black woman who waves her finger at everyone and finishes every sentence with the word "girlfriend") and so on and so forth. Nowadays it's best remembered for starring Jada Pinkett (Smith), wife of Will Smith. Her performance isn't that good and it's hard to believe they based an entire movie -- including the TITLE! -- on her character. Overall this is poor, stupid, (intellectually) offensive and insulting, clichéd, stereotypical and worse than all that: uninteresting! It's not entertaining, it's not funny, it's just dumb and annoying. Not even worth watching on TV.

• Didn't 'woo' me at all

  johnnyboyz2006-06-23

  I should have known that this film wasn't going to be any good; the director made another film by the name of 'The Guru' which has the 'honour' of being the only film that I've ever rated lower than 4/10(!) The thing is with this film is that most of the time, you're laughing at it, instead of with it. Some typical examples of this are occurrences when the main character's friends, or indeed, any characters for that matter, talk in the way that they do. You'll instantly recognise the style; the typical 'gangster' accent which is actually more amusing than a lot of the jokes. Given the fact this film is made up of an entirely black cast, this method of delivering the dialogue is constant throughout and is, in my opinion, very annoying after a while. It's not 'Chris Tucker' annoying but it grates in its own way. This film's setting takes a bit of a 'road movie' approach as it never lingers for too long in a certain place or setting, or at least that's how these single route journey's in film SHOULD take place. In 'Woo', the place of no return they set off from (the guy's apartment) right the way through to the final scene is crammed with ridiculous scenes in pretty generic settings and the frustrating thing is, is that they last for far too long and are far too unfunny to be appearing in a film which is listed under the comedy genre. Incidences here include the farce that happens in an Italian restaurant, a rather pointless and unfunny scene in the next setting: a secret underground club which has the ability to hide its loud music RIGHT until you get up close and open the final door and also in a police station during which I can't even remember one joke. Other frustrating things include the use of slapstick early on and a rather irrelevant scene involving LL Cool J, whom the protagonist goes to visit for advice on: wait for it…..music(!) I think LL Cool J appears rather early/high up in the pre film credits yet lasts for about four minutes. Yes, it's ridiculous. Romance? Yes. Drama? Probably. Comedy? Erm: No Chance. One moment in this film made me laugh and that was when a character went to switch off his car alarm, only to find the car gone and the alarm lying there, still in perfect working order. That's not enough, I'm afraid.

• One of the worst EVER

  barontick2000-07-21

  I had the displeasure of seeing this movie last night. It was on one of the HBOs and it was one of those movies that is so bad, you can't stop watching. Afterwards, you just think to yourself, "why the hell did I just sit and watch that awful, awful movie???" Please don't waste your time with this. There are only a few memorable, funny lines, but I don't even remember them. My mind is so clouded with how bad this was. You'd think Will Smith could get his wife a decent part with how powerful he's become in Hollywood.