In Code Name: The Cleaner, Cedric the Entertainer is a janitor who loses his memory and is duped into believing he is actually a secret agent. Nicollette Sheridan pretends to be married to him in order to gain his trust and some valuable information about a computer chip. Cedric is further duped by Lucy Liu, who pretends to be his real girlfriend. Corrupt agents from the FBI and CIA are also on the loose. You can see the trailer here.
The good news is that the movie boasts nice shots from the two most beautiful cities in the world: Seattle and Vancouver (the movie takes place in Seattle, but we can see that a lot was actually shot in Vancouver). We have two actresses I like: Nicollette and Lucy. Also, the few short scenes with comedian DeRay Davis, who plays one of Cedric's co-workers, are pretty funny; and, best of all, we have Niecy Nash in a character called Jacuzzi! I think Niecy is one of the funniest girls around and her short cameo in this movie is hilarious -- she plays one of Cedric's flings. Oh, and the movie is only 91 minutes long; if you do decide to see Code Name against my advice you will be thankful for that...which brings us to the bad news.
The movie is bad, kinda watchable, but bad; and we have five scenes with negative-leaning gay content.
Our first scene with gay content is the opening scene of the movie. Cedric wakes up in a hotel room next to a guy, and without knowing he is next to a guy, Cedric gropes him, only to be utterly disgusted a few seconds later when he finds out he was groping a dude. His reaction was actually not so bad given that Cedric could have been repulsed by the fact that he groped a dead guy.
In the second gay scene, Nicollette takes Cedric to her house to try to convince him that they are married, and Cedric finds a pink thong in his bathroom, and he is all "oh this is so wrong." Again, not so homophobic, but not nice either.
Then, Cedric is waiting for someone in his car and a guy who is sitting in a car accross from him stares at Cedric, getting Cedric to go talk to him. Cedric thinks the guy in that other car will have some sort of intel for his case (Cedric thinks he is a secret agent, not a janitor, remember?), and when Cedric approaches the car we learn the guy in the car is a gay guy who had arranged a meeting on the Internet. Again, Cedric is repulsed by the idea of male intimacy and his reaction was pretty bad. Again, gays are used for a cheap laugh.
Then, in a scene that was actually pretty funny, comedian DeRay Davis (who plays a janitor and rapper wannabe) is about to get shot while cleaning the bathroom. To our surprise, the janitor actually invites the shot because in his reasoning the shot will validate him as a rapper: "if I die I'm Tupac, if I survive I'm 50 cent." He asks the guy who is about to shoot him to aim at his ass, he turns around and starts screaming "give it to me in the ass," like a crazy person, the guy who is about to shoot him freaks out and leaves our funny janitor screaming "I wanna it bad in the ass" and a janitor friend walks in at that moment, of course. I think that in the old days, the janitor friend would have had a very bad reaction and called him all sorts of names, but in Code Name he just said something like "I don't even know you anymore." So this was the only sort of neutral light for us gays, but in the end, that scene too used the gays for ridicule. Again, not nice.
The worst scene with gay content happens at the end. I will talk about it after the jump because it will ruin a bit of the plot, but since you will probably not see this movie when it opens tomorrow, read on...
[SPOILER AHEAD]
At the end scene we have a huge fight scene where our chubby homophobic hero beats up the guy who was actually the owner of the pink thong Cedric saw in the beginning of the movie, and after beating him up he says something like "and that was for wearing that pink thong."
That drove me crazy. The underlying message for straight bullies is: people who wear pink thongs deserve to be beaten up. Very sad. Very sad.
To Cedric character's credit, he does not say the word 'F' word, but through his actions and reactions, I don't think it would be crazy to infer the word was probably in his thoughts...Shame on writers Robert Adetuyi and George Gallo for letting those negative images into their movie.
You actually sit through movies just to nitpick the gay comments? Get a life!!!!
Posted by: BigSexy | Jan 08, 2007 at 01:27 PM