Verdict: A brainless booty shake.
Hip-hop has dominated pop music for a long time now, mainly because it's hard and real and street-level. Leave it to Hollywood to never quite get that. Oddly, potty-mouthed white rapper Eminem made one of the strongest movies about the culture in "8 Mile." But most hip-hop-themed movies recycle stereotypical images and tired plotlines.
"Honey," the first feature film from music video director Bille Woodruff, is no exception. Pouty, luscious-lipped Jessica Alba (of the Fox TV show "Dark Angel") stars as Honey Daniels, a J. Lo-like Bronx bartender and dance teacher who dreams of shaking her booty in music videos. She gets to do that and more, faster than Snoop Dog gets those "Girls Gone Wild" hoochies to pull up their shirts as the screen goes wiggly-jiggly in those late-night TV commercials.
But that's the problem with this trite and untrue movie. It's a tease from start to finish. Like those irritating TV ads, you know what's going to happen next, and you know you're never actually going to see anything.
The story is a bit of "Flashdance" and a bit of "Breakin' " (except for lots of music and cameos by current hip-hop stars, it's atmospherically that '80s), as white music video director Michael Ellis (David Moscow) sees Honey dance in a club and recruits her to groove in his latest shoot with Jadakiss and Sheek. Quick as a bad rhyme, she's choreographing moves for Tweet and Ginuwine and ends up being Missy Elliott's girl. Yeah, right.
You might hope that "Honey" would be a kitschy howler on the order of "Showgirls." No such luck. The only remotely campy scene, and the movie's supposed big conflict, is when Ellis suddenly turns from cuddly to crude, comes on to Honey and gets his pasty face slapped. After that rejection, the lout blackballs our heroine - that is until Elliott saves the day, and the hip-hop dance school Honey is trying to open for the street kids.
"Hip-hop can't take you to places ballet can," says Honey's mother (Lonette McKee). Predictably, that's easily proven not to be the case, as this movie goes from one hackneyed line and episode to another. And Alba doesn't really act so much as mug and strut for the camera, like some exotic Paris Hilton.
The choreography (by Laurieanne Gibson, who also plays Honey's nemesis) and music may be enough to grab "Honey's" target audience of urban adolescents. Those at the screening seemed to get a big kick out of juvenile rapper Lil' Romeo and finger-snapping wise girl Joy Bryant (who plays Honey's best friend, Gina). But I'd rather kick it old school and stay home with the cranked-up DVD of "Krush Groove."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By BOB TOWNSEND
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