![]() Likethe movie itself, Half Pint often gets overwhelmed.) The Gammas’ distaff auxiliary are the Gamma Rays-including the magnificent Campbell-some of whom have gone overboard on blond hair dye and blue contact lenses. (These hopefuls include Lee himself as suffering Half Pint-whose major accomplishments are to betray his cousin and lose his virginity. The Wannabees cluster around the authoritarian frat house Gamma Phi Gamma, a quasi-Fascist band of “Big Brothers” who shave their pledges bald. Two warring student body factions are whimsically dubbed the Wannabees and the Jigaboos: light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks, those who “wanna be white” and those who glory in their difference. There are at least eight communities here, all but one within Mission College (based, vaguely, on Lee’s own alma mater, Atlanta’s Morehouse). Instead of representing his “types” with characters, he shows them as groups, split up into energetic little ensembles. In “She’s Gotta Have It,” each of Nola’s three male suitors represented a specific type, almost a “humor.” In “School Daze,” Lee takes that approach further. The important thing is that it hits its share, with a view of black college life that’s impudent, juicy and fresh. “School Daze” tries too many targets to hit them all. Is it a musical-and, if so, what kind? An “Animal House”-style sex comedy? A political romance? A satire of contemporary black academia? A football farce? A “community” comedy a la Robert Altman? A deceptively fissured ideological discourse on the need for black unity? A raunchy MTV review obsessed with rumps? A happy-time sepia “Good News?” Wildly hip-hopping, the movie careens around many different genres without settling firmly into any. It’s packed with breezy musical numbers and a brawling gang of characters, streaming through the movie in continuous eruptions of overlapping dialogue and dizzying badinage. ![]() ![]() It flares off in every direction, exploding in Roman-candle bursts of cheeky satire. Spike Lee’s “School Daze” (opening Friday at selected theaters) apparently began as a simple little script about pledges at an all-black Atlanta college fraternity during homecoming weekend.īut somewhere along the line, after the success of his “She’s Gotta Have It,” Lee began to load-even overload-his story.
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