If I could, I would like to take a moment at the start of this post to ask a question of this particular movie; to wit: “What the FUCK?!?” I would then like to go on to my follow-up question, “No, really, what the actual fucking FUCK?!?!“
I fear these questions will remain rhetorical.
The movie starts with the last day of children’s TV show host Hambo (Chance A. Rearden), who will be fired for drinking on the job, cursing out his audience, and molesting the nubile co-host (Amber Strauser). But never mind that, let’s meet Devin (Wade F. Wilson), a young black man who just got admitted to medical school. After a phone call from a distraught Hambo, Devin begs off an evening with his girlfriend, Donna (Ciarra Carter), to meet with his childhood idol and longtime friend.
Hambo has plans for his post-TV life, he tells Devin. He has designed a line of figurines called Badass Dolls, which will have voice chips installed in mass production. He shows Devin his line, with figures like Joe Cracker, The Crack Whore, and the bucktoothed bespectacled Gook (“There’s a steering wheel, because you know those people can’t drive. And there’s a camera because you never see ’em without one.”). What he feels will be his biggest seller (especially in Asia) is Ooga Booga, basically every racist trope about Africans boiled down to one figure. Devin seems surprised that his longtime idol is a racist.
In gratitude for his support, Hambo gifts Devin the prototype for Ooga Booga, larger (and frankly better looking). Devin is still carrying it when he stops at a store to get Donna a promised Rhubarb Slushy, only to have three lowlife scumbags come to rob the store and shoot the cashier. Devin lies low, and after the scumbags leave, tries to administer first aid to the cashier, until the cops arrive and totally not-ironically-named Officer White (Gregory Niebel) shoots him for being black.
There are strange doings at the Circle K, though, as electricity from the malfunctioning Slushy machine arcs to Devin’s blood and the Ooga Booga package, resulting in Devin’s spirit being transferred to Ooga Booga.
All this takes up the first third of the movie, incidentally. The second third will be filled with Devin convincing Donna that he is actually more than a Zuni fetish doll rip-off (yeah, I saw Trilogy of Terror too, Band), and Donna trying to track down the scumbags. Turns out the scumbags are actually in the employ of amazingly racist Judge Marks (Stacy Keach), and Officer White is his main enforcer. So we get to see White also track down the scumbags so we can have a lengthy scene of him threatening the scumbags if they don’t get their numbers up. It is not only lengthy to take up some time, but because there is a topless prostitute involved.
So most all our Ooga Booga mayhem will be confined to the final third of the movie, which makes sense in a structural way. We are allowed a bit earlier on when a racist neighbor breaks into Donna’s apartment to say racist things (Ooga Booga is playing music too loud, it seems, while Donna is out) and get Ooga Booga-ed. What the little guy does with the body, we’ll never know.
As you can imagine, something titled Ooga Booga (really, what the fuck?!?) is going to be problematic, even beyond Charles Band’s weird fetish for toys committing murder. The toy is at least presented as being created by an unrepentant racist, but this… look, it reminds me of a local lady who attends the annual School Board budget meeting, one of the things I cover for my day job. She gets up during the Public Comment section to say that she and her friend attended last year’s high school graduation, and her friend commented that it was sad that so few of the graduates were white. You see, she’s not racist, it’s her friend. That’s the kind of logic at play here, having your cake, crapping all over it, and eating it too.
I usually don’t criticize the acting in movies, because honestly, I usually feel I don’t have to. Online reviewers seem to feel it necessary 98% of the time, and 95% of the time it isn’t warranted. Is the actor doing something in a scene that drops me out of the movie-watching experience? No? Then that actor is doing his/her/their job, dammit. But the acting in Ooga Booga is so stereotype-driven and so one note, it draws attention to itself. I’m going to blame a rushed production schedule, because the acting is just good enough to churn out product. The only nuance needed for most of the characters is hatefulness, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to thoughtful character beats.
It also doesn’t explain how Donna becomes a vengeful Blaxploitation avenger, putting bullets between asshole’s eye without blinking hers. Keach’s scenes were likely shot in a day or less. But the real stunt casting – and the best acting job in the movie – is Karen Black, as the soap opera-obsessed Mrs. Allardyce, owner of the trailer park where the scumbags live. I’m grateful for any dab of difference in this exercise, but it turns out Mrs. Allardyce owns some racist statuettes of her own, so she will get Ooga-Booga-ed. Charles Band never got the note about the downfalls of reminding people of better movies.
And just to wrap things up in a racist fashion, it turns out that Hambo was right and he is now filthy rich, leaving a suitcase full of money to help Devin with his medical school expenses. Maybe this is just the ultimate nihilist movie, and I’m just too out of touch to get it – but I strongly doubt this is the case.
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