They Cloned Tyrone Review
Streaming Movie Review - Netflix
I saw a meme recently that essentially suggested that at every stage of our lives, we think the people who are older than us have everything figured out, but the truth is, we’re all kind of making it up as we go along. The idea of the bumbling idiot who just happens to stumble into something much larger than they are capable of dealing with has been a theme in many films, most successfully the films of the Coen brothers. Most recently, director Juel Taylor is exploring that and much more in his new film “They Cloned Tyrone,” currently streaming on Netflix.
Fontaine (John Boyega) is a drug dealer spending each day in a kind of loop. Fontaine is struggling to maintain his position in his neighborhood, so he heads to a nearby motel to meet the pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) and his sex worker Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) to get some money that he’s owed. Shortly afterward, he is gunned down in a gang accident, only to wake up the next day and have the loop start again. The three of them start to notice other strange happenings in their neighborhood and their investigations lead them into some really strange places.
This film does something that is difficult to pull off. It gives us a biting satire and impressive message while also just being a really fun movie to watch. Often movies that want to make a larger point can lean toward being preachy or so abstract that you lose the thread, but this movie is both incisive and fun.
The performances by the three primary actors are all fantastic. Each one really leans into the kind of 70’s blaxploitation characters that they are portraying and it is an absolute delight to watch them on screen. The costumes really play with that even more, giving the audience something visually appealing to enjoy while soaking in the story. And when Keifer Sutherland is on screen as the villain of the story, it’s fantastic.
While it does take a moment to get rolling, the story itself is really well-constructed. The sci-fi elements are smartly used while not becoming a crutch for the film to rely on. The movie expertly examines black stereotypes and the way that black people have been used by white people for their own purposes while never sacrificing character development or story beats for the sake of a lesson.
What is really fun about this movie is that none of these characters are particularly special. They themselves are stereotypes and they discover what is happening due to the presence of a number of other stereotypes. At no point are they some kind of masterminds; they just do what has worked for them and employ that for the good of their community. Sometimes using what someone thinks they know about you is the best way to do that.
This review originally appeared in The Dominion Post on July 29, 2023.