Oh snap, They Cloned Tyrone!
There’s something fishy going on around here, when cowardly pimp, Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), witnesses grumpy drug slinger, Fontaine (John Boyega), get shot and killed in a parking lot outside, only to come back to his hotel room the next day demanding money. Joined by the ambitious hoe, Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), the trio investigate a suspicious van that has been circling the neighbourhood, and find more than a few strange conspiratorial happenings about town; but none more confronting than the laid out cold original body of Fontaine – yes, Fontaine, and not the titular Tyrone… wherever he is. Juel Taylor directs.
Well, I may not have necessarily got the movie I was expecting from a quick glance at the poster while Netflix got underway – I thought a high-energy black-centric version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers could be fun, but instead They Cloned Tyrone is more like a tangential divergent of Us, which is also nothing to complain about. But, um, has They Cloned Tyrone ever heard of a snappy entry?! From the very beginning, this movie has tone problems that never really go away. It’s disappointing because there are other movies out there telling similar stories that manage a rollicking good vibe the whole way through, and this movie never gets anywhere near it – At World’s End or Baby Driver spring to mind, which I only just now realise are both Edgar Wright examples 😕 It’s funny too, because we bag Marvel for injecting generic humour into their works, but to avoid it and miss, can result in a blandness that leaves your story uninviting. Luckily, this movie does have a stimulating mystery going for it, one that I was determined to get to the bottom of, with ardent characters there to carry us along for the ride.
Sometimes, when a movie is building to one climatic revelation, the disclosure can be deflating, or underwhelming, but I think They Cloned Tyrone’s fits the bill, perhaps leading to as many more juicy intrigues as there are answers. There’s a dusty allegory buried well beneath the surface of this movie too, as the organisation conducting these tests on this town are doing so through fast-food, music, religion, and scratch cards, all designed to keep the community dumb and sedated. It’s made even more egregious since this is happening to a seemingly rundown black neighbourhood, where the peoples can be easily viewed as historically disadvantaged and managed as well. Although I found the plot predictable at times – the homeless guy having all the answers, the mother being nothing but a tape recording – I can jive with the movie’s wider message, of needing to cut through the external bullshit, for the good and strength of the community, and power to the people. Yet for all of the movie’s cautious subversion, I’m still not convinced that this movie ever pops – it’s almost like a movie-long episode of Doctor Who.
Yet, it turns out, if you put a grill in the mouth of John Boyega, and a thick deep accent, he’s hard to recognise. Fontaine is sort’ve a nothing character for mine, but it’s Boyega who gives him substance, and his mature performance is excellent. It sort’ve makes Finn from Disney Star Wars look even more like an abandoned puppy, and even more than I already thought he was 😬 But what I love most about They Cloned Tyrone is that it never stops being Boyega’s movie – Jamie Foxx is doing a heightened characterisation that grows on you, swinging for the fences from his very first scene, and although Foxx is always a charming customer, there’s something about Boyega’s lead performance that is stable enough to never be overshadowed. Actually, when I first saw Foxx was in this movie, I had a fit of worry, because the last time I saw him was also on Netflix in Day Shift, and the stink of that project still lingers in the air. The last time a famed actor put so much mayo on their character as well, was probably Jared Leto in House of Gucci, and those who know, know how that went down 🤢 I also commend Teyonah Parris as Yo-Yo, as I thought she was quite good. I was disappointed that the story doesn’t make her a clone as well though, as it works to put a spiritual barrier between the trio when they’re equally as crucial in solving this mystery; but it’s a small thing. The movie rationalises it by saying hoes are a dime a dozen, but I think she still fits the job description of a player on the outskirts of society, cloned to keep the regular chickees in their pen. There’s sort’ve an urban ‘Shape of Water situation going on here, where it seems the peoples on the fringes of the community work to maintain the boarders of the main experiment – there’s just no Amphibian Man 🐸
They Cloned Tyrone certainly holds no vanilla-missionary type ideas, but I think the writing could’ve been stronger, and the movie more cinematic. Yet with a whopping 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, the critical consensus has voted, and they say this movie is still worth your time 😱 For my time, I still personally liked the movie, for all the problems I saw, so I’m glass half full. They Cloned Tyrone has got an interesting premise, and is trying to do something magnificent. Perhaps the most infuriating part is waiting for an answer to why the movie is called “They Cloned Tyrone”, and thinking it’ll never come! It bugged me like a caterpillar crawling across my skin, even though, patience is a virtue, and actually, the only time I ended up smiling with this movie is in the final moments where we find out the reason. Good gag, movie, good gag.
3.0
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