Metropolitan and House Party
Movie #5 and 6
Date Released: 3.9.90 and ?
Date Watched: ?
Reaction:
This turned out to be a really interesting pairing, watched back to back only because of the way IMDB sorted 1990 movies by release date (obviously not so chronologically.) I wound up enjoying both movies thoroughly, even though they could not be more different. House Party is a slapstick-y comedy made by black filmmakers, likely for a black audience. Metropolitan could not be more white, upper east side of New York. Both movies followed the lives of young people just trying to make their way in the world. Competition and camaraderie among men (sorry–very male-centric) and confusion about love. The movies mirrored each other very nicely and both happened to be quite entertaining.
House Party featured yet another pair of white racist cops and, for the first time in the movies I’ve watched, the portrayal was done with sincerity and authenticity and anger. The first encounter with the cops involves them rolling up on a black teen and harassing him about where he’s headed, only to get distracted by their running out of donuts. The second interaction, the movie basically pauses as the same thing happens to that teen’s dad. The dad stops and calls out the cops. “You’re just stopping me because I’m a black man walking in a black neighborhood.” The father is fearless (or shows fearlessness) and there is nothing funny about this scene.
The last major part they play is when they apprehend the movie’s teen antagonists, the bullies, and while we don’t see it happening, it is implied they have taken these kids to a secluded dock to beat them. And this is a comedy…The reason it is a comedy is that this is a message from black people to black people. This joke must be a way of coping.
The movie is, on its own, quite good. It’s funny, entertaining, and pretty well acted. I don’t know what happened to Kid from Kid n’ Play, but he has some acting chops.
Metropolitan looks pretty dry from its description. And I imagined it being a sort of less funny Woody Allen movie about rich New Yorkers in their teens or early twenties. And, maybe that’s not far from what it was. But this movie has great heart, good dialogue, and decent acting. One thing that I found striking was the self-awareness described by some of the characters as they talk about the end of the ‘debutant’ era. They kept saying ‘you know, because of everything happening’. Later, someone elaborates that ‘everything’ refers to the tanking economy and the possibility for downward mobility.
I also imagine that during the first year of the last decade of a millennium, there might have been a feeling (probably correctly) that an era was ending or maybe that (perhaps not as correctly--perhaps) the world was ending. In both these movies, landline phones still played a key role, and computers are hardly mentioned. In a sense, they both capture the end of an era after which many many things did change but, unfortunately, some of the needed changes just never took hold.
Publishing Notes:
I don’t know why I wrote these together
