Baadasssss!

In 1971, against all the odds, Melvin Van Peebles made Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song, a movie regarded as seminal by Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino in terms of independent filmmaking. Here Melvin's filmmaker son Mario plays his father in a film about the making of Sweetback, which also starred an 11-year-old Mario (played here by Khleo Thomas). Still with me? Good - Baadasssss! is a funky, turbo-charged tale of guerrilla filmmaking when a black man making a movie was a political statement in itself. The various setbacks and obstacles are outlined in a darkly humorous story of stubbornness, incendiary politics and radical vision, and Mario has the good grace to depict his father as a driven, selfish, philandering egomaniac for whom the film was always more important than its makers, his friends and even his family. By the same token, there's a cartoon feel to this film that undermines its serious intent. The cigar-chomping Melvin comes on like a caricature of bad ass attitude, and young Khleo Thomas is woodenly ineffectual in what should be a pivotal role. Nonetheless, this is an entertaining look at the dynamics that paved the way for what we today consider independent American cinema, and there are some poignant moments along the way; to wit: "We were so busy bringing the message to the people we never stopped to worry about if the people gave a shit about the message." Plus ca change, etc.