Scribbler's Rave & Favorite Five: Tuesday Night at the Movies, #4 Friday

The story of Friday making this list begins with the hiatus between posts in this part of the "Rave & Favorite Five" series, which also begins with the movie that it replaced.  Ever since my mother took me and my brother to see it in the spring of 1990, I have been a huge fan of House Party.  Between the fashion, the music, the dances, the rhymes, the slang and even the comedy, I thought it was one of the best movies at capturing the height of the New Jack Swing era of R&B and hip-hop culture.  However, as I attempted to write my post about it as the original No. 4 spot holder, I wasn't feeling what I was writing because I kept battling myself over whether House Party should be on my list or Friday--another movie that I went with my mother and brother to see as well as another one of my "brothers".  In figuring out my dilemma, one of my dear, dear friends posed a simple question: "Which movie do you think is more complete between the two?"  Once I sat and thought about it, the choice became simple and my trepidation was resolved: I couldn't have a "Rave & Favorite Five" about movies without Friday.  I actually thought about bumping out Blade Runner for House Party, but Blade Runner is just way too epic to get axed.  Now that the backstory is complete, it's time for the main event: five things that make Friday the sureshot...

#5 YOU CAN WATCH FRIDAY AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT.  While some movies require a carefully-planned-out event surrounding them or the need to be in the mood to watch them, that type of grand gesture has never been needed for Friday; it's pretty much a pop-in-and-play film.  Prime example...out of all the things that I remember the most about the night of my senior prom, three things stand out the most: 1) how overpriced the food was at the restaurant we went to before prom; 2) the nearly-synchronized makeout sessions between the respective couples in the limousine; and 3) a bunch of suited-and-booted teenagers riding around downtown D.C. after leaving said fancy restaurant watching Friday in its entirety as if we hadn't already seen it at least 20 times a piece.  Another more general example is whenever my friends would come over or I'd go over their house and we needed a good laugh, it was usually between Don't Be a Menace and Friday and the latter film edged out the former by way of an unofficial coin flip.  Whether it's in a limo, kickin' it with the homies, being over someone's house and watching it with a bunch of folks that you barely know or having a Netflix & chill night before there was a such thing at Netflix, Friday is always the perfect icebreaker.  It's always relevant and, as long as it's not on USA and a certain expletive hasn't been replaced with "Mickey flickey", it's always funny.

#4 EVERYTHING ABOUT THE CRAIG VS. DEEBO FIGHT GAVE ME LIFE.  Deebo (Tom "Tiny" Lister, Jr.) had a butt whooping coming the entire movie and, unbeknownst to him, Craig Jones (Ice Cube) was being prepared to be the one to deliver it.  When he was about to use his gun to protect his friend Smokey (Chris Tucker) from a bunch of gangbangers, his father Willie Jones (John Witherspoon) told him that his fists would be "all the protection you need": "You win some, you lose some, but you live...live to fight another day!"  (That was always one of those parts of the movie that wasn't supposed to be as funny as it was.)  So when Craig's love interest Debbie (Nia Long) was the only one in the neighborhood brave enough to step to Deebo after he abused her sister Felisha (Angela Means Kaaya) and he backhanded her as well, you knew it was on like Donkey Kong and Craig had to be Mario with barrels.  Although I get into how quotable Friday is later on, this was Deebo's moment as Craig pulled a gun in defense and he dropped one-liners like "what you gon' do with that besides make me mad" and "yeah, put that gun down son...and get knocked out like your father used to".  Now I know that Craig was getting choked out and manhandled for most of that fight and some people might say, "Craig ain't tough for real because he had to use a brick and a trash can to beat Deebo," but I offer two things in response to that.  First, my daddy told me three years before Friday even came out, "If you gotta use a brick or something to defend yourself, then do what you gotta do."  Second, a young, vastly-undersized David knew that the only way that he was going to defeat the gargantuan Goliath was by the grace of God and the biggest rock that he could find; all he did was go on to become king of Israel and Judah.  So you could say that the Bible told Craig to throw that brick...I'm just sayin'. Besides, if you dare raise your hand to a woman as eternally fine and super bad as Nia Long and tell the dude crushing over her when he defends her honor, "Shut up before I drop you like I did this b---h," then you deserve a brick to the face.  

#3 THIS WAS THE SPRINGBOARD FOR CHRIS TUCKER'S FUTURE SUCCESS.  The strength of a good comedy isn't just the witty one-liners or the script itself, but also in the physical comedy and that's part of what made Smokey so memorable as a character.  There are the obvious moments like his "you did not put in on this, man" encounter with Pastor Clever (Bernie Mac), his frequent run-ins with Big Worm, being front and center to tell Red (DJ Pooh) that he  "got knocked the f--k out" and his failed love connection with Rita (Yvette Wilson) a.k.a. Janet Jackson a.k.a. "got out the car lookin' more like Freddie Jackson".  However, it's Tucker's big eyes when Red takes off his sunglasses after taking the aforementioned one-hitter quitter from Deebo, his "I ain't with that gay sh--" facial expression when a high Craig was all up in his face and his disgust when he stumbled upon Deebo's skid-marked tidy whities.  It's the audacity of Smokey to think that he could pull a fast one on Big Worm as he turned $100 over as if that would somehow double his fortune.  It's the ridiculousness of standing on top of a roof like he was Tony Montana and popping off a few shots from his handgun, but letting out a high-pitched yelp as bullets from more powerful semi-automatic weapons narrowly miss him.  One of the scenes that always made me and my friends laugh is when Smokey's drop-top Ford Pinto--which, being one of the most famous lemons ever-- is comedy by itself--had a mind of its own and he couldn't stop the car from rolling even when it was supposed to be in park, twisting his foot in a ridiculous way.  It's this kind of comedy that made his future roles in Money Talks (which could've easily made this list as well) and Rush Hour absolutely golden, but Friday will always go down as the movie that helped to put the rest of Hollywood on notice about Chris Tucker. 

#2 ALTHOUGH CHRIS TUCKER WAS CLEARLY THE STAR, EVERYBODY PLAYED THEIR PART.  Another important factor that makes Friday such a gut-busting classic is its supporting cast.  The movie starts off with the Lawanda Page playing an old church lady knocking at Craig's door and every bit of the Jesus leaving her spirit with an emphatically hilarious "well f--k you...half-dead muthaf---a" when he shuts the door in her face.  Although Willie Jones is perhaps the most charismatic member of Craig's family, Betty Jones (Anna Maria Horsford) gives Mrs. Parker (Kathleen Bradley) the shadiest "ehhh-kayyy" of all time.  Speaking of Mrs. Parker, her watering of a lawn that doesn't have much grass in the skimpiest of outfits was a scene for the ages as well as her husband (Tony Cox) catching her and Pastor Clever in the act as he kicked him out, threw a brick through his rear car window and saying "God d----d devil".  Antagonists already covered with Big Worm and Deebo, there's Red and his dad (Reynaldo Rey) who Deebo runs off the block over a Beach Cruiser; Craig's super ratchet girlfriend Joi (Paula Jai Parker) bumping 2 Live Crew's "Hoochie Mama" as her unofficial anthem; Stanley (Ronn Riser), who is perpetually a half of a curse word away when people step in his grass; the neighborhood fiend Ezail (Anthony Johnson), who will find any way to come up; the bad-behind 'hood kid Lil' Chris (Jason Bose Smith), who needed a belt taken to his hind parts probably ten years earlier; the aforementioned Rita, who was Catfish before Nev Schulman brought the term into pop culture; and, of course, the unkempt and strung-out Felisha, whose character dismissal is now legendary.  Even the kids at Big Worm's ice cream truck asking for chili Fritos--including a young Meagan Good well before she became one of my TV girlfriends--added splashes of character to a movie chock full of it.  Jaki Brown-Karman and Kimberly Hardin will probably never get enough credit for the casting clinic done for Friday, but they get major props here.

#1 IT'S ONE OF THE MOST QUOTABLE COMEDIES EVER MADE.  In an effort to simplify this last section, I'm gonna do a "Rave & Favorite Five" within a "Rave & Favorite Five" that's part of the bigger "Rave & Favorite Five" of my favorite five Friday quotes.  (Don't fake like you didn't just get lost for a second because I had to keep up my doggone self.)  No. 5: Smokey puts the fake-me-out, self-righteous Pastor Clever in his place: "Well round here, between Normandy & Western, we call this here a little twenty twin-twin...N---AAAA!!!"  No. 4: the funky-faced Willie Jones sets the tone of how you warn people after you just dropped a "stanky load": "Don't nobody go in the bathroom for about 35, 45 minutes...somebody open a window!"  No. 3: Ezail tries everybody's life in the corner store: "Oh, my neck...my back...my neck and my back!  I want a hunid and a fifty thousand, but we can settle out of court right now for twenty bucks!"  No. 2: Smokey tries to get rid of the lecherous Felisha: "Remember it, write it down, take a picture, I don't give a f--k!"  No. 1, and I've always loved this one: Big Worm checks a wannabe-gangstafied Smokey: "First of all, don't be calling me like you some straight up G 'cause I'll cut your balls off and hand 'em to you, patna!  I had to warn you too many times about my money, Smokey!  It's the principle of the whole thing...it's principalities in this!"  There are so many more that I could've included--and some of y'all might even question which ones made my list--but the fact that I can darn near quote this entire movie verbatim without reading the script goes to show its lasting impact 21 years later.  While quotability is one of the key factors with the next three movies on this countdown, Friday gives every last one of them plenty of competition.

Now I KNOW that there are plenty of Friday fans out there, so please sound off with some of your favorite scenes, quotes and other servings of awesome about about one of the greatest comedies of the 90s!  Please make sure to come back next week as I reveal the No. 3 movie on my "Rave & Favorite Five: Tuesday Night at the Movies" series!!