The Best Man = Boyz N' The Hood 2

The 1990's was quite a time in African American Cinema. The Early 90's were defined by the rise of the the "hood movie" which would have you believe all that every black person in America lived somewhere near south central Los Angeles, substituted malt liquor for one of the basic food groups and had some sort of daddy issues. By the end of the 90's the pendulum had swung completely in the other direction with the "Jack & Jill movie" these films revolved around all of the beautiful, educated, and successful black people who's biggest problems stemmed from being beautiful, educated, and successful. The movie that defined the "hood" era was John Singleton's Boyz N The Hood. The movie that kicked it off for the "Jack & Jill" was Malcolm Lee's The Best Man. The thing is black Hollywood is so small that many of the actors that were in "hood" movies at the start of the decade wound up being in "Jack & Jill" movies at the end of the decade.

Now because I often daydream when I am supposed to be working, I realized that these movies are linked because The Best Man is what would have happened if Ricky had he not been shot and killed at the end of Boyz N The Hood. If Ricky had gone on to play college football at USC he would have met people like the characters in The Best Man who wound up being his closest friends, and he would have gone on to be drafted by the New York Giants as a running back therefore providing him with the means to finance the lavish wedding in The Best Man. Lance Sullivan is the evolution of Ricky Baker. I will take it a step further because not only was Morris Chesnut in both films, so was Nia Long. Her character in Boyz N The Hood followed mark ass(loser) Trey down to Atlanta to attend Spelman. Atlanta is a long way from LA, so she probably would have become home sick and enrolled in USC to be closer to her mother. That is how Ricky/Lance & Brandi's/Jordan's friends all know each so well and are all happy and smiling in the picture above.

What point about black life and and the portrayal of African Americans in cinema can be drawn from this analysis? I'm not really sure I just know that I really like both of these movies and I should probably stop daydreaming so much at work.