‘Player’ An Exploitive, Crude, Sex Comedy
The “booty is marinating” for a busy playboy who avoids disaster with his girlfriend while maintaining a half-dozen steamy affairs and looking for more women “who want to be played.”
Starring MTV veejay Bill Bellamy (“love jones”), a number of players in HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam” and Robert Townsend’s “B.A.P.S.” and many topless women, “Def Jam’s How to Be a Player” is largely unsavory summer fodder destined to rouse only mild interest.
A crude, exploitative sex comedy about one man who pursues happiness with controllable women who crave his body, “Player” is surprisingly flat in terms of both filmmaking and the elementary screenplay.
Whereas movies as diverse as “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” and “Shampoo” have covered this territory with crowdpleasing and critical success, “Player” caters to adolescents with fantasies about potent sex lives that have no dire consequences.
There’s no doubt that selfnicknamed “Mandingo” Dray (Bellamy) is a charismatic scoundrel, but his victims are willing and use him with care. Undermined by the physical raunchiness and such foul shtick as Gilbert Gottfried’s perverted nerd doorman character, the satire is narrated after a fashion by the supremely confident lead.
Under the lackluster guidance of first-time director Lionel C. Martin, a veteran of music videos, “Player” feels like a sitcom pilot for the Nudity Channel. Perfectly dressed himself and prepared for action, with a potent rap, Dray makes the rounds one day with his hapless but aggressively rude pals - David (Pierre), Kilo (Jermaine “Big Hugg” Hopkins) and Spootie (A.J. Johnson).
Going steady with unsuspecting Lisa (Lark Voorhies), Dray lets his nosy sister (Natalie Desselle) and her flirtatious friend (Mari Morrow) examine his apartment for a college anthropology project. The feisty sister, who has been in love and been hurt, goes on the warpath when Morrow’s character falls for Dray.
We’re introduced to the hero’s lovers in a phone-message sequence that sets the naughty tone, but more extended visits with Beverly Johnson, Stacii Jae Johnson, Amber Smith and Gillian Iliana Waters lead to a climactic party where Dray is set up to lose all his girlfriends and “repent.”
The film’s nominal high point comes when Max Julien - star of the 1973 film “The Mack,” a poster of which Dray has in his apartment - puts in a cameo appearance as the inspiration for Dray’s prodigious appetite for females. As a jealous husband, Bernie Mac joins the rest of the cast in using manic energy to no avail. Still, Bellamy and everyone else emerge unscathed.
The TV stand-up comedy roots of the creative talent are all too evident, from uninspired production design to awkward pacing, and even the Def Jam soundtrack is not playable enough.
xxxx “HOW TO BE A PLAYER” Location: North Division Credits: Directed by Lionel C. Martin, starring Bill Bellamy, Natalie Desselle, Lark Voorhies, Mari Morrow, Pierre, Beverly Johnson, Jermaine Hopkins, A.J. Johnson, Max Julien Running time: 1:33 Rating: R