I had seen Melvin Van Peeples' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song on VHS some 10 or so years ago alone late at night and thought while many of the visuals were awesome, it seemed to mainly be about a black man running from the law after killing a couple of cops for killing a fellow brother along with having sex with various women, black and white, and nothing else of any substance. And how shocking was it finding out in the credits that the child who portrayed Sweetback as a young boy having his first sexual experience was none other than Melvin's own 12-year old son, Mario! So now, 30 years later, Mario portrays his own father during that time when he was trying to get that movie made after the studio of his previous film Watermelon Man, Columbia Pictures, refused to get involved along with the other majors. Baadasssss! is a mostly funny and maybe a little scary look at what it was like for a black filmmaker to struggle to put together his movie without any artistic compromises to the white establishment. Perhaps the most notable scene is the one where Mario as Melvin is directing his son for that sex scene and later the aftermath of seeing it in the screening room with the sound man saying to the son how he had to be 18 to experience that! Liked seeing T.K. Carter as Bill Cosby and Rainn Wilson as producer Bill Harris. And check out the role Adam "Batman" West plays! Felt a little wistful seeing the late Ossie Davis as Melvin's father and the late Vincent Schiavelli as distributor Jerry Gross. All in all, Baadasssss! is a fitting son's tribute of his father's achievements in pioneering black cinema. And, yes, that means I might reevaluate SSBS again some time!
Review of Baadasssss!
