Review

Patti Cake$

In Geremy Jasper’s uplifting underdog story Patti Cake$, PBNJ is the name of the rap group started by Patti (Danielle Macdonald), Jeri (Siddharth Dhananjay) and Basterd the Antichrist (Mamoudou Athie). That’s Patti’s grandmother (Cathy Moriarty) in the ski mask.
In Geremy Jasper’s uplifting underdog story Patti Cake$, PBNJ is the name of the rap group started by Patti (Danielle Macdonald), Jeri (Siddharth Dhananjay) and Basterd the Antichrist (Mamoudou Athie). That’s Patti’s grandmother (Cathy Moriarty) in the ski mask.

Most movies you've seen before.

Underdogs overcome long odds. Unlikely heroes emerge. Yada yada yada. One of the chief reasons most people go to the movies is to bask in the reassuring tropes and cliches of Hollywood convention.

Patti Cake$

85 Cast: Danielle Macdonald, Siddharth Dhananjay, Bridget Everett, Mamoudou Athie, Cathy Moriarty, Sahr Ngaujah, McCaul Lombardi, Wass Stevens, MC Lyte

Director: Geremy Jasper

Rating: R, for language throughout, crude sexual references, some drug use and a brief nude image

Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

So maybe you'll give Patti Cake$, the directorial debut of Geremy Jasper -- former frontman of indie rock group The Drive, who also wrote the movie's script, songs and rhymes -- a pass for its predictability. It's a lot like Saturday Night Fever. It's a lot like Rocky. Maybe those aren't bad models, and maybe moviegoers who haven't seen them (and, while the demographic that reads newspapers might resist that notion, they do exist) will have a less jaded reaction to this movie than some professional critics have had.

Because it does have some significant merits.

First of all, it's set in a very real-feeling New Jersey, just across the Hudson from Manhattan and a million miles away from the glamour the skyline suggests. The crummy houses and grimy corner taverns look right. There's a scene in what appears to be a real VFW post. The actors, with a few exceptions, inhabit believably downmarket characters, the sort of people one sees in the street and maybe wonders about. I've got no doubt they were drawn from life. Jasper has said the story is "probably as autobiographical" as he's capable of telling. It's largely based on the 18 months he spent living with his parents in Hillsdale, N.J., after graduating from college.

But Jasper's surrogate isn't a lanky singer-songwriter but a heavy-set 23-year-old working-class woman named Patricia Dumbrowski -- Dumbo to the neighborhood but Killer P and Patti Cake$ in her hip-hop dreams -- played with some panache and deep intelligence by Australian actor Danielle Macdonald (who brings formidable flow to the role). Patti doesn't have it easy; her grandmother (an excellent and very welcome Cathy Moriarty) has run up some medical bills and her bartending job isn't enough to sustain her family, especially since her mother Barb's (Bridget Everett) hefty bar tab is probably coming out of Patti's paycheck.

Patti's life seems bounded by familiar streets -- she hangs out with her friend and musical collaborator Jeri (Siddharth Dananjay), they go to a low-rent diner and trade rhymes and daydreams al fresco, sitting on the hood of Patti's dilapidated (but still several degrees too cool) Cadillac. Jeri is Patti's biggest fan, the one who insists they're made for bigger things across the river. Some day, he says, they're going to run the game.

But Patti is more of a realist. Barb's dreams of stardom -- as the lead singer for an '80s rock band that seemingly specialized in Heart-style power balladry -- were derailed. Patti is no kid anymore. And besides, while she can battle in the streets with the best of them, she's got a touch of stage fright.

While much praised has deservedly been heaped on Macdonald, the real revelation here is Everett as the alcoholic, thwarted Barb, a woman who hasn't let a few extra pounds erode her confidence in her own sexuality. Everett, well-known in New York as a cabaret singer-comedian, is vulnerable and tough in the role. While the part calls for her character to sometimes act in ways that seem pathetic, Barb persists in dignity and gets her show-stopping moment near the end.

A more problematic character, Basterd the Antichrist ( Mamoudou Athie, who was young Grandmaster Flash in Netflix's The Getdown) appears to lend shape and direction to Patti and Jeri's ambitions. Heavily pierced and pathologically antisocial, he squats in a magic cabin behind a graveyard with a trove of scavenged recording equipment he uses to produce a killer mix tape for the new group, one which Patti -- awkwardly and with disastrous results -- delivers to the Jay-Z-like hip-hop mogul Oz (Sahr Ngaujah) in a scene so far-fetched I initially thought it was a fantasy sequence.

From there, the film plays out as you expect it will, relying on the admittedly excellent staging of the climatic musical number to sustain audience interest.

That's not to say Jasper doesn't tease some interesting ideas about cultural appropriation and the relative authenticity of rich hip-hop impresarios and the scrappy white and Asian kids who grew up on their beats. But there's something -- maybe a savvy commercial instinct -- that keeps this collection of well-observed, unglamorous but arresting characters from investigating genuinely interesting territory. While Jasper displays a wonderful eye for visuals (and for casting), his script is conventional and safe.

That doesn't make Patti Cake$ a bad film, only a mildly disappointing one. But he'll get more chances.

MovieStyle on 08/25/2017

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