SUNDANCE 2009 - Black Face Alert!
As the title suggests, I have my specs on the prowl for any films at this month's Sundance Film Festival, with black people in prominent roles, regardless of the faces behind the camera.
This one just landed on my desk.
It's called Mystery Team, and its synopsis reads as follows:
At age seven, Oakdale's Mystery Team was a band of kid detectives dedicated to solving child-sized mysteries (like who put their finger in the pie, and who stole the tricycle), and the town loved them for it. Now they're eighteen years old, about to graduate from high school, yet they're still storming the playground to bust little kids, and the town of Oakdale is sick to death of it. When a little girl sees their sign advertising "Mysteries Solved, Ten Cents," she asks the gang to find out who killed her parents. The Team embarks on a mystery that takes them deep into a violent conspiracy that sees their lives threatened, their friendship strained and tests their claim that they're "real detectives."It's a comedy, of course!
The film co-stars Donald Glover (no relation to Danny Glover, to my knowledge; that's him on the left) - a comedian and comedy writer based in New York City. Donald is a founding member of the sketch comedy troupe the Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz (never heard of them, but I'll look them up). He studied improvisation with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre in New York (familiar with them). He is also a writer for the hit TV show, 30 Rock on NBC, which won a few awards during last night's Golden Globes ceremony. Glover, by the way, is also listed as co-writer of the Mystery Team screenplay.
Here's the trailer for Mystery Team - it looks silly/funny/juvenile, like possibly a series of sketches that are better suited for short YouTube placement, than a 90-minute film with a true narrative. But, I obviously haven't seen it, so, I'm going solely based on the trailer below, which has been seen nearly 1 million times on YouTube, with close to 5,000 comments! So, clearly, there's an audience anxiously waiting for this:
Hmm... sounds interesting as a thriller and the trailer looks mildly interesting... But it kind of lost me at "it's a comedy."
Kudos to Mr Glover though. I smell a hit.
Looks hilarious and the sketches on youtube are fantastic. The one Derrick Comedy did about the spelling bee that Glover is in -- too funny.