Spike Lee followed his successful debut She’s Gotta Have It(1986) with this musical comedy set in the all-black white-financed Mission College, poking satirical fun at campus capers while tackling class and colour distinctions which divide the college into two mutually exclusive categories: the haughty, lighter-skinned students who are called “wannabees” (they “wannabee” as bourgeois and white as possible) and the darker-skinned youths who embrace blackness.
Upwardly mobile and politically conservative, the wannabees are led by the dictatorial Julian ‘Big Brother Almighty’ Eaves (Giancarlo Esposito). Demanding that Mission College divest itself of its investments in South Africa, the darker-skinned kids rally around a moral banner raised by student activist Dap Dunlap (Laurence Fishburne).
Besides directing, writing and producing the film, Lee turns in a brief but finely tuned comedic performance as Half Pint, a hapless fraternity pledge who is caught and almost crushed between his loyalties to his activist cousin Dap and Julian, the supreme commander of the prestigious Gamma Phi Gamma frat.
Besides being far too long, though, the film is too fragmented as it shifts from serious stinging commentary to overly lavish musical production numbers.
Overkill abounds in a 1940s musical number set in a beauty salon where the women wage an all-out song and dance battle over the best way to wear their hair, natural or processed. It’s painfully self-indulgent.
Ossie Davis is superb in a bit part as a football coach delivering a hilarious locker room speech to his winless team. And singer Phyllis Hyman looks spectacular and sings beautifully in a scintillating uncredited cameo.
Samuel L Jackson appears in an early small role outside a chicken shop.
Dap Dunlap
Laurence Fishburne Julian ‘Big Brother Almighty’ Eaves
Giancarlo Esposito Jane Toussaint
Tisha Campbell-Martin Rachel Meadows
Kyme President McPherson
Joe Seneca Odrie McPherson
Ellen Holly Cedar Cloud
Art Evans Coach Odom
Ossie Davis Da Fella Grady
Bill Nunn Da Fella Monroe
James Bond III Da Fella Jordan
Branford Marsalis Da Fella Edge
Kadeem Hardison Da Fella Booker T
Eric Payne Gammite Half-Pint
Spike Lee Gammite Doo-Doo Breath
Anthony Thompkins Gammite Double Rubber
Guy Killum Gammite Mustafa
Dominic Hoffman Gammite Yoda
Roger Guenveur Smith Gammite Sir Nose
Kirk Taylor Gammite Mussolini
Kevin Rock Gammite Slim Daddy
Erik Dellums Cecilia
A.J. Johnson Paula
Cassi Davis Tina
Michelle Bailey Leeds
Samuel L. Jackson Moses
Edward G. Bridges Eric
Dennis Abrams Spoon
Albert B. Cooper IV Virgil Cloyd
Gregg Burge Buckwheat
Cinqué Lee Perry
Kasi Lemmons Muriel
Toni Ann Johnson Carla
Paula Birth Roz
Tracy Robinson
Upwardly mobile and politically conservative, the wannabees are led by the dictatorial Julian ‘Big Brother Almighty’ Eaves (Giancarlo Esposito). Demanding that Mission College divest itself of its investments in South Africa, the darker-skinned kids rally around a moral banner raised by student activist Dap Dunlap (Laurence Fishburne).
Besides being far too long, though, the film is too fragmented as it shifts from serious stinging commentary to overly lavish musical production numbers.
