Tonight's movie was M.O.P.: Straight from the Projects - Rappers That Live the Lyrics (Netflix rating: 1 star. Don't worry, folks; they're not all 1 star flicks... just a lot of 'em haha). I picked this one, frankly, 'cause it was short. And by short, I mean less than an hour long And you know what? This was way too long.Basically, the premise is that M.O.P. takes us on a tour through their project for a day. It's hosted by B Real; and there's your first problem right there. Dude is reading cue cards like he has no idea what he's talking about. He talks about what "we" saw that day, but he clearly wasn't there. And he's shot from two different camera angles, with both cameras constantly zooming in and out, and it cuts between cameras every single second. It'll drive you batty to watch it.
So, the host segments, which are frequent, suck and never contribute one iota - there's really no reason for him to be involved with this project. It's already so completely obvious what's happening in the film. Basically, it goes like this:
First scene) B-Real says, "and then we went to the high school they attended."
Second scene) M.O.P. says, "now we're going to the the high school we attended."
Third scene) M.O.P. points and says, "this is the high school we attended."
Fourth scene) back to B-Real for a new segment.
And that's the other problem with this film - there's basically no content. It's under an hour, it's padded with about ten minutes of useless B-Real footage... and almost all of the rest of the footage is padding to. Each new segment begins and ends (and has some in the middle) with footage slowed down, sped up, etc set to M.O.P. music. And every once in a while we cut to clips of one of their music videos - too short to be like, "oh, ok; we're watching their video now" but long enough for you to be like, "can we get back to the movie now?"
This film is all padding! And it's super short!
At it's core, there is about 10-15 minutes of inconsequential but fun footage of M.O.P. in their old hometown, reminiscing and kind of showing us the "real them." Which is, you know, not a great documentary; but nice if you're a fan. But no matter how much of a fan you love M.O.P., this film definitely draaaaggggssss.
I've never seen an episode of MTV Cribs (or any show on MTV, really, since the final episode of Yo!); but in my imagination, it's exactly like this, except with better pacing and lots of commercials. That's one thing this DVD has going for it - no commercials! ...Except, you know, in the sense that this is one long commercial for their then (2002) upcoming CD, which they do directly pitch to the viewer. Except for that.
In the end, M.O.P. are likable guys, but I think this film ultimately illustrates how unlikely it is that you'll be able to shoot a worthwhile documentary film in a single day.
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