I'm Gonna Git You Sucka

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka

In 1988, before Scary Movie, before In Living Color, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka was the first ever Wayans Brothers' project. A parody of 1970's blacksploitation films, their signature love of Zucker Brother-esque broad humor is apparent from right out of the gate.

It's clear that this is the first Wayans movie, as there's a lot of pacing issues and the majority of the jokes don't land. I don't exactly consider any of the Scary Movie movies to be comedic masterpieces, but at least they all have consistent gags that are hit-and-miss, but they move so quickly from gag to gag that there's no lingering on a bad joke. In this movie there's lots of time to linger on bad jokes, and it feels very awkward to watch. Considering they're going for something like Airplane!, you'd think they'd've taken note of how fast that movie moves, and adjusted their script accordingly. But instead they'll do a visual gag and then cut back to it several times in case you didn't catch it the first time. It never works.

In comedy, the performance is key, as that's where the golden rule of timing comes in. Unfortunately for this movie, none of the performances are particularly funny. Keenen Ivory Wayans is not a strong enough comedic presence to be the lead, which is a bummer considering how hard he must've had to work simultaneously acting, writing, and directing. Perhaps if he had found someone else to be the lead, he would've been able to focus more on the movie as a whole and improve it, but instead he gives an eager but ineffective performance. He's not alone though. Honestly, the only couple of laughs I experienced during the movie were from visual gags, none of the actors in the movie made me laugh at all. Everyone seems sort of tired, not wanting to commit to their characters or elevate the scenes in any way. The Wayans would have to wait until In Living Color to find those incredible comedic performers that they needed.

I'm pretty sure I've only seen one blacksploitation film (The Mack, which is a ton of fun), so it could very well be that there were a lot of gags and references that completely went over my head. And the movie wasn't miserable to watch by any means, I just barely laughed. One gag that made me laugh very hard involves Isaac Hayes gearing up to fight the bad guys, the YouTube clip of which I'll leave right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhe58xORWG0

While it's not a bad movie as a whole, it's a pretty weak comedy. If you're a comedy writer, it's a good example of bad pacing for a comedy movie. If you're not a comedy writer, just watch In Living Color instead. It's much better.