So it had been about 20 years or so since I'd watched Bulworth, and I remember liking it a lot. My IMDB rating was 8/10 and so I figured I'd give it another look since the olden days, and while I still think I can give it an 8/10, I am so much more conflicted today after a few more decades of film watching experience. It has a LOT of flaws, atrocious dialogue and excessive Beatty rapping and stereotypes of poor (as in poverty, not a judgment) black culture that is cringey and difficult to sit through at times. It also has some wonderful moments in it and an overall structure that redeems a lot of it's flaws.
The Bad:
The writing / casting. There's no way around it, the dialogue sounds extremely dated even for the '90s, and it's made worse by the miscasting. If you want to portray hard people from the hood, Don Cheadle and Halle Barry are horribly miscast. They feel wooden in their performances, but it's not helped by the awful lines they have to deliver with phrases like "bust a cap". It doesn't age well, but also it was never really good, and while it is a comedy, there is a drama at its heart that would be better served by some better writing and some different casting choices.
Some of the stereotypes. The movie has a lot of fun with stereotypes, and while it obviously makes a lot of effort to be respectful to black culture, the ghetto kids and the hype girls are a bit much. It's all in fun, and I appreciate the risks being taken, but I'm not sure if they really add too much to the film.
Warren Beatty rapping. I get that he is going insane from a lack of sleep and a major life crisis, but it just keeps going past the point of being humorous. I think they were going for cringe here, and they did succeed, because the rhyming isn't clever and the points he is making are pretty milquetoast, but we also have to remember that in 1998, it was a time when everything seemed great for your average moviegoer. Most folks seeing this movie were adults during the Reagan and Bush era, and were disheartened that Bill Clinton sounded almost exactly both of them. It was a dark time for left wing activism, especially because the rest of the country seemed to think everything was generally pretty great. So the content of his rap was probably a little more provocative back then, so I will give some of it a pass.
Underwritten characters. Bulworth wants a life insurance policy, but why? He doesn't love his wife. We never see him interact with his chi
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This could have been a good movie. The cast includes Warren Beatty, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, Sean Astin, Christine Baranski, Michael Clarke Duncan, Nora Dunn, Wendell Pierce, Oliver Platt, Sarah Silverman, and Paul Sorvino.
But it's terrible. It's as if Warren Beatty got high, wrote a movie, invited all his Hollywood friends to star in it, and filmed it over Labor Day weekend. Nothing make sense. The dialogue is terrible, and all these incredible actors seemingly forgot how to act.
I've always wondered about Bulworth (1998), it was released in cinemas when I was a little too young to go see it and from it's soundtrack the song Ghetto Supastar (sic) performed by Pras, ODB and Mya which perfectly samples Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and was a massive global hit.
The movie is a political satire and its over 20 years old but some of the themes and issues resonate as much today as they did back when it was released. The fact the issues still resonate makes the film still relevant.
However, I think the film is embarrassing and poor quality. I can only imagine it was released in this form is because Warren Beatty who stars, writes and directs must have had final cut approval. Beatty talking in rhyming couplets throughout the film (his version of rapping) is trite and quickly becomes wearing.
I won't spoiler the plot but some parts of the narrative are silly and unrealistic and that's an understatement.
A 22 years young Halle Berry is Beatty's (65) love interest. Yup.
A younger, thinner Olly Pratt plays Senator Bulworth's senior advisor, his character is inconsistent (starts doing cocaine at one point) but Pratt does well with what he has to work with.
Christine Baranski is underused as Bulworth's wife. Paul Sorvino has a good first scene and then hardly features after that.
A young Don Cheadle plays a gangster from Compton, some of his scenes are illuminating and have some clever dialogue.
There's an important and amusing movie buried inside this movie but Warren Beatty executed his vision poorly.
If you're keen on movies about flawed electoral politics your time is probably better spent watching Blaze (1989) an underseen Paul Newman movie about a southern governor who falls in love with a stripper. It's not superb but its superior to Bulworth.
Bulworth is a drama political type film about a Senator that plans a hit on himself then begins finding himself. The film touches on aspects of music, aspects of politics, aspects of stereotypes, aspects of business industries in tandem with politics, aspects of social tensions, aspects of romance, and aspects of corruption/truth amongst other points. As the film progresses, I start thinking of the film Man of the Year (2006). This film isn't as funny to me as it is jaw dropping especially when the CSPAN crew stops appearing in the film, mainly the woman in the van, her reactions are funny, good duo for those in van CSPAN scenes. There is so much social commentary in the film, quite a surprise for my night time film. The acting partners fulfill the film. I feel like the film gets its points across.
It's disturbing watching this movie and realizing it's literally happening in the US
So I watched Bulworth and, having grown up in the 90s as a teenager, I was fairly aware of the film when it came out but dismissed it as a bad comedy where another old guy (Warren Beatty) does young people stuff and thinks it's hilarious. While I do think that was a side 'benefit' to this film, it wasn't what it was going for, and I only know this because I've read a book on the New Hollywood era of the 1970s and how brilliant and integral Beatty was to this era, and how he could really never be your typical 'old guy.'
Beatty came up as this pretty boy actor in the 1950s but by the 60s he had, more or less, controlled Hollywood, being the guy that bosses wanted in their films but he was also an intelligent artist who had his hand in writing, producing, and even directing a bit. When you needed things to get done in Hollywood you called Beatty. He wasn't a studio head, but he was probably the next best thing at the time. As such, he was the man who jumpstarted the New Hollywood era of films, beginning with Bonnie and Clyde and, more or less, culminating with Raging Bull, an era where directors had, basically, total control over their films instead of studios, and Beatty was the guy spearheading this movement, as he was adamant in how Bonnie and Clyde was treated, even after it was a box office bomb on initial release. He was definitely an 'against the grain' type of guy, and always seemed to care about the art more than anything else (besides maybe getting laid, but that's another thread for Warren). I only point this out because I'd never known much of this until I read that book a few months ago, and it sets the stage for how great Bulworth tried to be but didn't quite get there, and it's only with a few steps back from the 1990s that you can see how good that this film almost was.
What I found in this film were moments of sheer brilliance along with a few moments that are downright embarrassing. The rapping that Beatty does in this is enough to take you out of the picture, which it almost always did with me until I sort of got used to it and just accepted it as a once-bored man finally having fun in life and kind of got over it. The scenes where Beatty is dressed up in someone else's clothes and walking around south central LA are also a bit cringey but it did serve a purpose, as the police need to not recognize him at first when they encounter each other. But enough about the bad, let's get into what I find brilliant about this film.
First, the
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Watching for the first time in 20 years and given the current circumstances, may resonate even more than before. I was young when I first saw it so I didn’t get the political messages it was sending in between funny old white guy rapping. The issues that were addressed in the movie set during an election in 1996 are still the same issues we are dealing with now, 24 years later. His first speech at a church in south central could be as true today as it was then.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XA62refAB2w
Come on Jimmy you’ve been living on a diet of soft drinks for 13 years
It’s time to eat? What is on the menu
This movie is fucking wild. It’s really a shame that Beatty won’t ever make it past the first round of MM. Hopefully #thetwofriends cover him at some point because every film he’s made is wild in a different way.
This film cost $30 million to make and only made $26 million domestic (not adjusted) but the original soundtrack went PLATINUM !!
Aaron Sorkin did uncredited rewrites of the script and Ennio Morricone did an original score....
Beatty truly can pull so many strings to get his films made and people will do it!! It’s crazy and should be discussed!!!
