The first time I saw Friday was during government class my senior year in high school. Yes, government class. We had a substitute that day (who happened to be African American), one of the students (who happened to be African American) had a bootleg copy of the movie (which happened to star African Americans), and somehow he talked the sub into letting us watch Friday instead of the planned educational video. It was a low-quality copy, with time markers on the bottom and everything, and I didn’t quite get the movie’s appeal at the time.
Flash forward about three years. I’m living in my first apartment, I’ve been smoking a certain psychotropic herbal substance for a few months now and my roommates and I check every video store in town for a copy of Friday. It’s a college town, though, so every store’s copy is either perpetually checked-out or stolen. By Christmas, we’re getting desperate. I buy a copy for one of my roommates and, without me knowing it, he buys me a copy. Now we’re swimming in Friday and the certain psychotropic herbal substance, and suddenly I get it.
Flash forward another year. Friday has become a cult classic, we’ve just about worn out both copies and even without the certain psychotropic herbal substance, it still seems hilarious. Friday is the kind of movie you know you shouldn’t be laughing with – a simplistic plot, all sorts of lowest-common denominator drug and ghetto humor and stuff you’ve just plain seen elsewhere – but it has an intangible charm and some definite comedic energy.
A lot of the movie’s laughs are owed to Chris Tucker. He’s been a lot of things since, from his annoying Fifth Element diva to Jackie Chan comic relief, but he perfected his routine here. As Smokey, part-time pot dealer and full-time pot smoker, he steals the movie and proves a perfect balance to Ice Cube, the gangsta rapper with a perpetual scowl on his face. Cube plays Craig, the straight man, the semi-responsible 24-year-old who has been fired from his job for stealing boxes. ("Now, how you gonna get fired on your day off?!")
It’s Friday, he doesn’t have a job, and he doesn’t have %@&! to do, apparently, except sit out on the porch and watch the strange goings-on in his neighborhood. The midget neighbor with the gorgeous wife, the homeless crackhead who begs everyone for money, the anal-retentive neighbor who doesn’t want anyone walking on his grass, the no-good girlfriend who won’t leave him alone and neighborhood thug Deebo, who wanders the neighborhood, demanding whatever money and belongings the residents have on their person.
Amid this backdrop, Smokey manages to convince Craig to get high for the first time. (Believe it or not, Ice Cube’s character is the most straightforward, moral one on the block.) But it’s not Smokey’s weed; it’s Big Worm’s, and when you mess with Big Worm’s money, you mess with his emotions. If Smokey and Craig don’t get $200 by day’s end, it’s a cap in both their asses. It’s not exactly a Hitchcock plot, but it’s enough to set up some of the craziest, politically incorrect set pieces ever captured in a drug comedy.
Friday has some cheap, embarrassing moments. It’s best taken with a grain of salt, after all. But it has a great cast (also including Regina "227" King, Anna Maria Horsford and blaxploitation veteran John Witherspoon) and some memorable characters, and after a few bowls, it’s hard to disagree with. Definitely Cheech and Chong for the Boyz in the Hood generation.
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