The Wood

Rating

Director

Rick Famuyiwa

Screenplay

Rick Famuyiwa, Todd Boyd

Length

1h 46m

Starring

Elayne Taylor, Omar Epps, Richard T. Jones, Sean Nelson, Duane Finley, Trent Cameron, Malinda Williams, Patricia Belcher, Taye Diggs, Tamala Jones, De’Aundre Bonds

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
A trio of high school students become friends and develop adult relationships in The Wood, a coming of age story.

The film opens with a wedding, or at least the beginnings of one. Mike (Omar Epps), one of the groom’s best men, has been dispatched to track down the missing groom. In his search, he takes fellow best man Slim (Richard T. Jones). When they receive a call from a distraught Tanya (Tamala Jones), they soon discover where Roland (Taye Diggs) has gone. The story is told primarily in flashbacks while Mike and Slim try to retrieve Roland and help him understand why he’s getting married.

The flashbacks begin with Mike (Sean Nelson) moving to Inglewood, California with his mother and brother. There they must start a new life as they have done many times before. His first day on the playground, Mike meets Slim (Duane Finley) and Roland (Trent Cameron), who invite him to stick with them as they pursue the greater pleasures of high school life. The most significant event isn’t Roland falling in love, but rather Mike’s fish out of water story as he tries to cope with his new life and his emotional attractions. Alicia (Malinda Williams) is his first love, whom he meets on the playground through a bet with his comrades to grab her butt for a dollar. He does so and ends up in a schoolyard fight with her brother, Stacey (De’aundre Bonds), but after he’s beaten, Alicia takes pity on him.

The Wood takes a lot of liberties with the story, following the same three characters through youth and adulthood. While the present day story focuses on Roland and his cold feet, the past day story centres on the three friends, but primarily Mike’s adjustment to a new life.

The acting is certainly adequate for the material. The younger actors are a little over the top, but they fit well with the decade of excess in which they grew up. Epps is sympathetic, Jones plays stupid and Diggs acts drunk; each one giving a modestly believable, but wholly uninteresting performance. The women in the cast are better, Williams being the best. The others are archetypes that merely support the story without adding much to it. Williams, on the other hand, keeps the younger actors in place during her scenes and creates an emotional attachment with the audience that allows us to sympathize with her.

Writer and director Rick Famuyiwa keeps the film moving at a good pace, but doesn’t cut out enough of the extraneous scenes that don’t further the story. Additionally, the movie lacks an emotional core to keep the audience interested in the future of the characters. As a result, we have no reason to rejoice at their triumphs and mourn their losses.

The movie wants us to focus on the growth of the characters from their juvenile childhoods to their adult relationships and on how their immaturity can still be evident even in their adulthood. Roland’s fears of commitment are the primary example and Mike’s on-and-off relationship with Alicia is another. The filmmakers want us to think that our formative years, while seemingly separate from our experienced lives, are intricately linked and even the insecurities of our teens can directly affect our adult relationships.

The Wood is disappointing. While it contains some humorous moments, it never achieves the necessary bond with its audience that would make it a better film.

Review Written

May 16, 2002