As busy I get from time to time, I find that I can't see every movie under the sun, leaving my friends and colleagues to fill in the blanks for me. As poetically as I think I wax about movies on this website as a wannabe critic, there are other experts out there. Sometimes, it inspires me to see the movie too and get back to being my circle's go-to movie guy. Sometimes, they save me $9 and you 800+ words of blathering. In a new review series, I'm opening my site to friend submissions for guest movie reviews.
TODAY’S CRITIC: Lafronda Stumn
Lafronda Stumn is a student at Madisonville Community College and intends to graduate with an Associate's degree in Associate of the Arts. She plans on earning a Bachelors Degree in Motion Picture Studies and English at Wright State University. Her favorite Directors are Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Spike Lee, and her favorite actors are Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Halle Berry. Lafronda contacted this page looking for a place to get published and I enjoy giving people that very kind of opportunity. This is her 19th guest review for Every Movie Has a Lesson. Welcome as always, Lafronda!
HER REVIEW: The Players Club
Stripper movies usually about sexy bodies with a dumb story and dialogue. The Player's Club is one of the better films in which the main character earns empathy because she wants to make a better life for herself and continue her education. However, with paying student loan debt and the high cost of college tuition, some women go to desperate means to make their dreams come proper career-wise.
That is the dilemma of the character Diamond (Lisa Raye) encounters. After a fight with her parents and their disapproval of dating a guy that is not worthy of her love, Diamond moves out, gets her place, and from advice from a friend, agrees to strip at the local strip club to pay her rent, school tuition, and to take care of her young son. Bernie Mac is the owner of the strip club named Dollar Bill, who has mounting debt to pay off with his gangster pals.
In an early role, Oscar winner Jamie Foxx is the DJ who takes a liking to Diamond and tries to ask her out. Diamond likes Blue, whom she loves but is not as ambitious career wise as Diamond. Diamond's cousin Ronnie (Chrystale Wilson) is also down on her luck and moves in with Diamond and her boyfriend. Diamond helps her get a job as a stripper there at The Players Club. Unfortunately, Ronnie gets a lot of bad advice from another stripper, Tricks (Adele Givens), which leads to situations that threatened Ronnie's relationship with her cousin Diamond. Diamond also goes to school to earn her degree and struggles to stay alert in class as her professor and friends try to motivate her to hang in there, juggling school, a night-time job, and being a mother.
The Players Club script by Ice Cube is hilarious and insightful in the daily struggles of a young black woman trying to make a better life for herself and her family. Several scenes that work are the ones between Bernie Mac and his chided assistant Lil’ Man (Anthony Johnson), who has to go through as the whipping boy for all the things that go wrong with Bill’s creditors. There is an excellent catfight between Diamond and Tricks that is very funny and suspenseful in the stripper's dressing room. 2 Live Crew make an appearance as themselves and perform without being offensive for a change.
I think Lisa Raye is outstanding as Diamond. You have great empathy for her and the situations with her profession being a mom and the men in her life, especially the cousin. Bernie Mac is very lively and funny as the owner. Adele Givens is cold and ruthless in a very effective way as Diamond's nemeses.
The film is also a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of stripping and how any young woman of any race can fall victim to the pressures of stardom and fame at a high cost. The film does a great job of thinking twice about getting into a profession that can cause trauma and stereotypes of the woman of color face when dealing with the work of a stripper.
RATING: ***
CONCLUSION
Thank you again, Lafronda! You are welcome anytime. Friends, if you see a movie that I don't see and want to be featured on my website, hit up my website's Facebook page and you can be my next GUEST CRITIC!
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