![]() ![]() The downside to this video - directed by Rihanna’s “We Found Love” helmer Melina Matsoukas - is the obviousness of reference at the end, as Aguilera bodaciously sucks off on her cereal spoon, watching cartoons and flipping to Lucille Ball’s face. But this song is a hit, she’s roared through the youth of promiscuous folly, and arrived on the other side now winking at herself and winking at us. It’d hint at several layers of boardroom-inspired desperation, with glossies of Aguilera vandalized with penises drawn on her face. If Aguilera hadn’t done vids like vag-flashing “Dirrty” or bondage bedraggled “Not Myself Tonight” in her previous incarnations, this wouldn’t be very funny. And then she murders them, with an explosion of pink smoke and glitter or gratuitous splashes of blue semen-paint, strategically dripping from her mouth. It’s funny, ’cause men are sort of like animals, right? Anyway, it’s nasty from the top, with Aguilera writhing in her campiest Strawberry fashions in the promise of a “killer week,” trolling the bars with her lip gloss-dripping mug and gel tips, preying on stubble-sexy bro-dudes for playtime in cars, mens’ bathrooms and cheap motels. The colorful clip is automatically filed under “farce” with its initial warning, that no men were harmed in the making of this video. That’s the point of “Your Body,” which is equal parts “I Love Lucy” slapstick, Snooki and Beyonce’s trailer park pin-up “Party” vid. “Next Day Air” is well-intentioned but ill-thought, an amateur work by a first time filmmaking team trying to make the kind of film they like to watch, but ignorant of what makes those kinds of films work.If Christina Aguilera’s freaky sex were a criminal, it’d be a serial killer. Mostly it’s Epps and Hardwick and Harris being paranoid in the room. And barring Yasmin Deliz’s eye candy, there isn’t much else really interesting about it.Īnyone who thinks they’re in for some sort of light crime comedy with Faison and Mos Def dealing with drug dealers and gangsters is in for a supreme disappointment. There is some genuine drama to be had there, but Hardwick isn’t up to carrying the entire film, and isn’t really given the chance. He offers the film its only real moments of humanity and his interactions with bodyguard Buddy (Darius McCrary) are both engaging and sadly nihilistic. There’s some to be had from Mos Def, in the two whole scenes he appears in, but most of what little there is has to come from Omari Hardwick’s Shavoo, the drug dealer trying to buy the cocaine who is having something of a mid-life crisis about his chosen profession. It really could have used a bit more timing and presence. It’s supposed to be one of those films where the characters’ telling interactions draw the viewer in, in lieu of a plot (which tends to occur in the background), but that sort of thing takes an ability with dialogue and pace Cobbs doesn’t seem to have. Which is all about as entertaining as it sounds. And sometimes just pass the time with video games and hookers. Instead, we spend most of our time in the apartment of Brody and Guch, or their next door neighbor Jesus, as they alternately rejoice, agonize, argue about, scheme over and search for the cocaine. They’re trying to develop a fairly large ensemble, which is a tall order at the best of times, and probably impossible in a 90-minute movie. Leo himself is actually something of a red herring, as Boom and first-time screenwriter Blair Cobbs spend only a minimal amount of time with him. It’s the kind of movie directors like Guy Ritchie and Joe Carnahan love to make, repeatedly, just less clever. That wouldn’t be too bad if the rest of it was entertaining enough to make up the difference, but it’s not. And usually to engage in a few funny, entertaining digressions in the process, but video director Benny Boom, making his feature debut, keeps unbalancing his film in favor of the second choice, delivering a film that ends with more of a whimper than a bang. The idea in these kinds of stories is the ticking clock, using the foreknowledge of the confrontation to come to build tension and suspense until the moment arrives. When he mistakenly delivers ten bricks of cocaine to a pair of gangsters (Mike Epps, Wood Harris) instead of the would-be drug dealer next door (Cisco Reyes), he suddenly finds himself two days away from having a whole lot of guns pointed his way. And that’s just the start of his troubles. A job that self-same mom is getting ready to fire him from for being a hopeless screw up. His girlfriend (Lauren London) has just left him, he lives at home with his mother (Debbie Allen) and he works a dead-end job as a delivery man for Next Day Air. Leo (Donald Faison) doesn’t know it yet, but he’s just about at the end of his rope. ![]()
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