They Cloned Tyrone review: Jamie Foxx comedy tackles blaxploitation tropes

At first glance, They Cloned Tyrone is a silly satire of early ’70s blaxploitation flicks like Super Fly or Willie Dynamite that adds what writer-director Juel Taylor and writer Tony Rettenmaier call a “… dash of Scooby Doo.” Fortunately, the filmmakers here have something more in mind, as they create a meticulously constructed world to tell a tale that uses age-old theories, myths, and conspiracies—some proven to be accurate, like the infamous Tuskegee experiments—to explain the woes of the Hood.

When we first meet our principal players—pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), a drug dealer named Fontaine (John Boyega), and a prostitute named Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) occupying a Black community called the Ville—they are the elements of what must be comedy. Indeed, the characters in this movie would be problematic as a depiction of the Black community if they were presented as earnestly as they would have been back in the day.

As the film opens, we meet Fontaine in his lime-green 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix. All the vehicles in the Ville are vintage 1970 to 1999-ish; indeed, everything and everyone in the Ville seems plucked from a mishmash of elements from the era of Hood movies. Fontaine is the top local street distributor in the Ville. We watch as he dispenses his wares through a network that includes a little kid called JuneBug (Trayce Malachi, stealing all his scenes as he cracks wise while sucking on a juice pack). We meet Slick Charles and his “hoes,” including Yo-Yo, setting up at the local motel where Slick runs his operation. Slick owes Fontaine money, and when he comes to get it, their exchange is a whirlwind of Jamie Foxx pimp-isms worthy of a Katt Williams comedy special. It’s funny, but it’s also a dumb stereotype that has to earn its place in the movie, which it eventually does.

In short order, Fontaine is killed by a rival drug dealer. Or so it seems, until he wakes up and, unbeknownst to him, repeats the previous day, right up to his visit with Slick. Here’s where They Cloned Tyrone, clearly not afraid to mix genres, adds an element of urban sci-fi thriller. Our heroes come together to figure out what’s going on behind the curtain in the Ville, and the film takes on a comedic caper tone while offering more than a straightforward narrative about a mystery solved by Scooby-Doo’s “meddling kids.”

As the movie continues, it adds heavy layers of social commentary to a rather nimble and funny genre mashup, tackling the relationship of Black folks to Black folks, both despite and because of the influence of white folks in our communities. Clones notwithstanding, at this point the movie becomes a drama and the “pimp and hoe” schtick becomes the foundation of a more thoughtful commentary. It acknowledges theories related to environmental dumping, the distribution of crack cocaine, voter suppression, and maternal death rates in the Black community, and yet the film’s writers, director, and producers (mostly Black folks), have a point of view about the causes of these problems that some will find specious. I also don’t care for the film’s conception and condemnation of the “Hood.” As someone of the Hood—we called it the Ghetto when I was coming up—I know that while it includes some drug dealers, the occasional pimp, and assorted hoes, it also had (and still has) myriad people who are none of those things. The great majority of people in and from “the Hood” are doing fine, if not well—even if it is also true that “the man” is looking to get his knee on a brotha’s neck, literally and metaphorically.

Back in the day, films like Super Fly considered themselves dramas, ostensibly about the internecine workings of urban Black America at the time. In fact, they would have been nominated as dramas if the Academy had been woke to the Black Experience through more than the soundtracks of the early 1970s. So as companion pieces to the thematically ballsy comedy drama They Cloned Tyrone, I recommend a couple of throwback films about the Black community from back in the day: Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Let’s Do It Again (1975) are a couple of not-often-spoken-of Black classics distinctly set in the Black community and pointed at Black audiences, featuring African American characters involved in comedy capers. These films are full of Black folks doing Black things in Black ways. They’re still funny, and interestingly, they are not thinking about white folks at all.

So what of They Cloned Tyrone? It’s funny and more thoughtful than it looks while still maintaining itself as a trenchant social satire. Also, for the record, there is no character named Tyrone.