25 / Jungle Fever / Spike Lee

Jungle Fever is a mess of a film. That's not to say I hated it. There where some really great momentsand it raised some interesting issues about race and relationships in the 90's. But instead of focusing on that, Lee decides to throw as may other things in as he possibly can. Namely a really out of place subplot about Flippers drug addicted brother. Neither of these parts on their own are terrible, Samual L Jackson gives one of the best performances I've ever seen from him as crack addict Gater. But does the film overall benefit from all this content? No, it suffers. It's message is diluted and I was left not really knowing, what if anything Spike Lee was trying to tell me? I have a lot of respect for Spike Lee, and Jungle Fever is in no way a bad film. I love the way Lee manages to eschew the typical narrative of these kind of films as showing one side of the racial arguent as being right. Instead he shows you the whole picture, carefully and lets you decide for yourself. There is no black hero as you expect. He often sets you up with that character and then spends the film showing you that he, is ust as flawed and messed up as the instantly unlikeable characters. This honesty is present in the film, but unlike some of his other films it's lacking a punch or a real purpose. It just feels like he's treading the same ground, which isn't a problem. It just would have been nice if he had something new to say.