Mo' Better Blues

1990 jazzy movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A trumpet player juggles friendship, a couple women, and his career.

The character arc for Denzel Washington's Bleek might work, but I thought the subplots with Wesley Snipes and Spike Lee's characters were a little distracting. Spike Lee throws both a lot of style and a lot of substance on the screen, but both are a little hard to buy. Dramatic camera movements and loads of color do little more than prove to the viewer that somebody is directing this movie, and the story sprawls when it should be more focused and stretches when it should be a little snippier. If you take the whole thing as a 2+ hour jazzy song, there are some solos in this thing that seem to go on forever and lots of moments where you have to say, "Man, that cat can play!" but ultimately not caring very much.

Speaking of solos, there really is a lot of live jazz music shown in this. It's almost like Wesley Snipes and Denzel Washington told Spike, "Hey, we spent a lot of time training to be able to pretend to be trumpet and saxophone virtuosi, so let us show the audience what we can do for at least an hour of the film's time."

How awesome is it that both Snipes and Washington would use the word "virtuosi," by the way? Virtuosos is probably the more common plural of virtuoso, but these two are too cool to mess around with that.

I did enjoy the music in this one--lots of Coltrane and Coleman with a great use of Mingus, too. They tracks selected might be a little too obvious. Bill Lee and the Branford Marsalis Quartet handle the rest of the score, including the stuff that Bleek's band is supposed to be playing. I liked most of it, especially the cool opening theme. Oh, and I always liked the Gang Starr "Jazz Thing" song that plays over the closing credits. That one was right in the middle of my prime rap years.

The performances are mostly good. Spike himself plays the only type of character I think he can play, a little bundle of nervous cool. Denzel is really good. He brings this sparky presence. There's a really great moment where both of the women he's banging show up to watch him perform, unfortunately wearing the same dress that he had gifted them. Watching him engage with them with two different personalities revealed a lot about his character. Snipes was really good, and so were John Turturro and his brother Nicholas as the fast-talking Flatbush brothers who often finish each other's sentences. The two love interests were played by Joie Lee and Cynda Williams, and they did well with what they were given. Spike Lee isn't writing for his female characters as well as the men.

A Flava Flav opening where he spells "Universal" and then laughs maniacally got things off on the wrong foot, but it recovered quickly with a great opening shot that fetishized a trumpet.