Taken on its own, “Baadassssss!” (Sony Pictures Classics) has severely limited appeal. It’s not that the film is artsy or inaccessible or requires deep background information beforehand; actually, the opposite is true. The film’s long, muddled narrative, a blow-by-blow account of the making of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassssss! Song,” lacks focus and loses its audience halfway through. Ultimately, this does a disservice to the story of “Sweetback,” the first blaxplotation film and one of film history’s great triumphs of willpower over financing.
Brought to the screen by writer/director/actor Mario Van Peebles, whose father, Melvin Van Peebles wrote, directed and starred in the original “Sweetback,” “Baadassssss!” suffers from its creator’s passion for the subject matter. It’s a good story, but in the rush to include every last pitfall that was overcome while making “Sweetback,” the film rambles on and quickly becomes self-indulgent. Mario has two cameos in the film and was on set for most of the shooting of “Sweetback,” so the story has personal as well as political dimensions for him. Unfortunately, he becomes so wrapped up in telling the story that he remembers he failed to craft a film that could engage an audience in the story of his father’s masterwork. What could be a fine testament to an important film ends up being trite.
Van Peebles’ work in front of the camera easily surpasses his work behind it. He captures his father and his father’s character, Sweetback, with equal ease and poignancy. Unfortunately, he has to carry the entire movie himself, since the rest of the cast scrapes the B-Movie barrel and leaves nothing behind. David Alan Grier (“In Living Color”) co-stars as a catty porn producer. And it goes downhill from there.
In the end, “Baadassssss!” only speaks to people with a serious interest in film history or the cultural representation of blacks. It’s too obsessed with the maverick spirit of the original to engage people who might not have heard of “Sweetback,” and it’s too plodding to edify those who are interested in the subject to begin with. It pays tribute to an important film, one that is due to be remembered, but the curious would be better off watching the original instead of this half-baked tribute.
