Cast: Taye Diggs, Omar Epps, Richard T. Jones, Sean Nelson, Trent J. Cameron, Duane Finley, Malinda Williams
Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Producers: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa, David Gale
Screenplay: Rick Famuyiwa
Cinematography: Steve Bernstein
Music: Robert Hurst
U.S. Distributor: Paramount Pictures
The Wood is a pleasant but relatively inconsequential movie about a man who gets jitters on his wedding day, and how his reminiscences with two close friends enable him to decide whether or not to go through with the big event. If that doesn't sound like enough fuel for a feature length movie, there's a good reason - it's not. So writer/director Rick Famuyiwa, making his feature debut, spends more than an hour flashing back to some of the junior high and high school exploits of the trio, including their first meeting, a brush with the law, and their early attempts to have sex.
The tone of The Wood is uneven. The 1999 scenes are slow, unconvincing, and not especially interesting. They also feature the film's single most disgusting incident: an unnecessarily detailed sequence showing a character vomiting all over his friends and the inside of a car. On the other hand, the flashback episodes, which transpire between 1986 and 1989, introduce compelling characters in situations that hold our interest. Famuyiwa recognizes the disparity in quality and attempts to generate some interest in the present-day sequences by having the characters address the camera as if it's a passive observer. In the end, two-thirds of The Wood is devoted to the teenage boys, turning the non-flashback material into little more than an overlong framing story.
The title refers to the place where events take place, not, as one of the characters remarks, "what you think." The setting is Inglewood, California, and the friends are Mike (Omar Epps), Slim (Richard T. Jones), and the bridegroom, Roland (Taye Diggs). Hours before his wedding, Roland has disappeared. Mike and Slim find him at the house of an old girlfriend, Tanya (Tamala Jones), drunk as a skunk. It's their job to sober him up. In the process, they reminisce about their past experiences as Roland contemplates the freedom he's about to lose and the new life that's ahead. (Why are men in the movies always such babies about getting married?)
In 1986, Mike (Sean Nelson) had just moved to Inglewood from North Carolina. New at school, he is befriended by Slim (Duane Finley) and Roland (Trent J. Cameron), who immediately con him into grabbing the booty of the cutest girl in school, Alicia (Malinda Williams). Although Alicia reacts in a hostile manner, eventually she and Mike become close friends, and, after they move from junior high to high school, they start going out. Meanwhile, Mike, Slim, and Roland are inseparable. One aspect of their relationship is that they bet on everything. When they're younger, it's who can get the most phone numbers at a dance. Later, it's who can be the first to lose his virginity.
One aspect of life that The Wood effectively illustrates is how romances are often ephemeral, but same-sex friendships usually last the test of time. Mike, Slim, and Roland are as close in 1999 as they were in 1986, but none of them are with the girls they dated back in high school. This isn't exactly a groundbreaking point, but most movies make the fallacious assumption that teen romantic relationships last forever.
It's possible to lump The Wood into the ever-expanding category of youth-oriented movies, although this effort has a wider and more ambitious scope than most of its contemporaries (it's actually more of a traditional coming-of-age story). It also looks at the high school years from a different viewpoint. All of the characters in The Wood are black, making this a rare motion picture to examine the process of growing up in this country from a non-angry African American perspective. No one gets shot, and violence is relegated to the background. In the press notes, Famuyiwa states that he intentionally ignored this aspect of coming of age in Inglewood, preferring to focus on the more positive aspects of the community he grew up in.
The cast is solid, with the actors, whether they play the characters as youngsters or as adults, capably handling their roles. A few of the faces will be familiar to frequent movie-goers. Omar Epps is perhaps the highest profile name, having appeared in a number of major motion pictures, including The Program and The Mod Squad. Taye Diggs is perhaps best known as Angela Bassett's toy boy in How Stella Got Her Groove Back. And Sean Nelson won critical raves for his debut in Fresh before going on to co-star in American Buffalo.
When The Wood works, it does so because it effectively develops the characters as teenagers. During the 1999 scenes, we care about the adult versions of Mike, Slim, and Roland not because their circumstances are noteworthy or compelling, but because we have grown to know and like them during their youth. The Wood is a solid debut for director Famuyiwa. It's not the kind of motion picture that will make a huge splash at the box office, but, for those looking for a simple comedy-drama that offers a reasonably fresh perspective on the late-'80s while not challenging its audience, there's nothing rotten about The Wood.
© 1999 James Berardinelli