Netflix Self-Torture Experiment Trilogy #51: My Baby’s Daddy
I kinda forgot about my movie marathon with all the basketball going on…
Synopsis from Netflix: Three childhood buddies (Eddie Griffin, Anthony Anderson and Michael Imperioli) find themselves at a crossroads. With their girlfriends (Bai Ling, Paula Jai Parker and Joanna Bacalso) all pregnant at the same time, life as they know it is about to change forever. Are the good times over? Or are they about to embark on a bigger and better adventure? They’ll soon find out.
My thoughts: To make bad films more interesting, sometimes I like to play a game called “Let’s See How Quickly Can I Guess Exactly How The Rest Of This Movie Is Going To Play Out.” With My Baby’s Daddy, it took exactly 27 minutes and 51 seconds. That’s when Eddie Griffin’s new love interest was introduced and the plot became glaringly obvious to anyone with a pulse.
I’ll spare you the details of the storyline, but I do want to point out that nearly all the humor (and I use that term loosely) was based on tired stereotypes. Like, do people actually still find it funny when an Asian person substitutes an “r” sound for an “l” sound? And then there were the names of all the Asian characters—Cha Ching, Bling Bling and Ding Ling. (Get it? Like ding-a-ling!)
The stereotypes weren’t limited to Asians, either. Eddie Griffin’s original girlfriend was the epitome of the welfare queen, Anthony Anderson’s cousin was the just-out-of-jail black guy eating Peking Duck like it was fried chicken, and Michael Imperioli was the manager of a white rap duo who was dumb enough to drop the n-word on the Apollo stage.
I doubt I have to say “spoiler alert” before I mention that all three protagonists learn important lessons about fatherhood in the end, and I also doubt that it will come as a surprise when I say this movie sucked. [One out of five stars.]
