Text size:

Dysfunktional Family

He's Bad, in a Bad Way

By John Anderson | STAFF WRITER

April 4, 2003

No stars. (R). Eddie Griffin concert film that makes you yearn for the glory days of Richard Pryor. Or a cup of hemlock. With Joe Howard, Matthew Brent, Robert Noble. Written by Eddie Griffin. Directed by George Gallo. 1:20 (vulgarity, sex, nudity, graphic sexual content). At area theaters.

Eddie Griffin is like the guy who comes to your party, clears one room after another, and keeps following people around the house. Did you hear the one about the white/Hispanic/ homo/Jackie Chan-lookin'/big booty girl/retarded guy? How about the turbaned Sikh I keep calling "Ben Laden"? Hah! No? Hey, where's everybody goin'?

Where they're going is not - if there's a God - into any theaters where Griffin's "Dysfunktional Family" is getting its inexplicable release. (Miramax, which at least used to feign good taste, is calling it "The movie they don't want you to see." Who are "they"? We should send them flowers.)

Star of the popular "Undercover Brother" and the less successful "Double Take," Griffin may be an equal opportunity racist homophobe, but he's no Richard Pryor - although the Pryor impression he tries at the end of the film is really no worse than the Pryor impression he's been doing from the start.

If Pryor, whose influence is so obvious here, was the big wheel, Griffin is something stuck between the treads. It's a desperate kind of humor he practices - frantic, scurrilous and totally dependent on (gasp) dirty words and the kind of graphic sexual content that can no longer be shocking, because Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence (to name three of Griffin's more obvious influences) have used up all the juice. Besides, those comics (Pryor and Murphy at any rate) have at the heart of their comic philosophies a political message and, as a result, a tangible generosity. Griffin couldn't care less about anything, including his mother, who at one point looks very embarrassed, and should be.

Which brings us to "Dysfunktional Family's" title conceit, the visits we pay to Griffin's real-life family - including one uncle Griffin recalls shooting up and another who's a porn addict. This is meant to expose Griffin's roots, but it becomes emotionally tiresome. Physically tiresome is the pace of the film, because director George Gallo and his editor, Michael Miller, in an understandable strategic move, have cut the film in such a furious style that even if Griffin were funny you wouldn't know it. There's never any rhythm to the act, no groove in which Griffin might, even if he could, seduce rather than bludgeon his movie audience. The constant jump cuts, the disconnected glimpses of the Kansas City crowd (of which there were at least two shots that were shown at least twice each) and the abusive nature of Griffin's stand-up routine make the whole thing an exercise in ... nothing. Just exercise.

"Am I bad?" Griffin coyly asks his crowd, following one particularly nasty bit of business. Yes, you want to say. You silly, boring man. You finally said something right.