Patti Cake$: Baked too long

Patti Cake$ (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity and crude behavior, and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.1.17

An endearing saga of empowerment beats within writer/director Geremy Jasper’s debut feature, but it’s too frequently buried beneath crude behavior, relentless vulgarity and a wildly uneven tone.

As the enigmatic Basterd (Mamoudou Athie) listens warily, Patti (Danielle Macdonald)
outlines a plan for a rather unusual rap group with her grandmother (Cathy Moriarty).

Jasper can’t get out of his own way. He makes the rookie mistake of larding his film with twitchy cinematography, tight-tight-tight close-ups, and a surfeit of artistic aggression undoubtedly intended to mirror his protagonist, but which too frequently feels like an assault on our senses.

A mere 15 minutes into this flick, I wanted to bolt the theater. Patience proved a virtue, as Jasper eventually found his footing, and his film — and its star — ultimately won me over. But not everybody was as generous, during last week’s preview screening; several people abandoned ship. It was hard to blame them.

Patricia Dombrowski (Danielle Macdonald), a plain, plus-size 23-year-old member of America’s working poor, ekes out a marginal existence in her dilapidated New Jersey home town. When not enduring insults during late-night shifts as a bartender in a seedy establishment populated by local losers, she’s stuck at home with a bitter, bitchy, boozy mother (Bridget Everett, as Barb) and a wheelchair-bound grandmother (Cathy Moriarty, as Nana).

Patricia’s fantasy escape route is fueled by her fixation on famed rap god O-Z (Sahr Ngaujah), whose posters fill her bedroom walls; she dreams of stardom under the alias of Patti Cake$ or — better still — Killa P. Truth be told, she’s a talented poet and nimble rapper, but nobody takes her seriously: particularly not Danny Bagadella (McCaul Lombardi), the swaggering townie who dominates the local rap scene, and cruelly calls her “Dumbo” and “White Precious.”

Patti isn’t entirely without allies; she shares her passion for rap with BFF Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay), a subdued young pharmacist by day, who blossoms into a wildly enthusiastic R&B crooner after hours. He believes in her, far more than she believes in herself. But faith isn’t enough, particularly when — at home — Patti must contend with her larger-than-life mother, who still resents the now grown result of an unintended pregnancy that derailed her own music career.

Everett’s Barb is frankly scary: a formidable force of nature so intimidating that one must credit Patti for having the chutzpah to stand up for herself. The uneasy mother/daughter dynamic is established early on, when Barb wades into the bar on karaoke night, and demands three quick shots from Patti: the latter two poured with long-suffering resignation, and full awareness of what is to come.

Cut to closing time, with Patti holding her mother’s head above the toilet, as she loses everything that passed down her gullet that evening.

It’s a necessary scene, to be sure, but Jasper lingers too long, as if determined to rub our noses in the moment. What should be revealing and embarrassing, instead becomes tawdry and disgusting.

Indeed, much of Jasper’s lengthy first act is needlessly disgusting, starting with the senses-assaulting O-Z rap video that opens the film (a bizarrely random prologue that prompted puzzled — and nervous — glances from patrons who wondered if they had wandered into the wrong theater).

OK, we get it: Patti’s squalid surroundings invite the crude behavior and reflexive profanity that surrounds her, and she gives as good as she gets. New Jersey rarely is treated respectfully in movies, but it looks horrific here: Production designer Meredith Lippincott clearly relished the assignment to highlight every dive bar, strip joint, low-end shopping center and fast-fried-food restaurant huddled beneath and within the noisy concrete canyons of freeway on-ramps.

Lippincott exposes New Jersey’s squalid underbelly in a manner similar to the tableaus of dilapidated West Texas, in last year’s Hell or High Water. One cringes at the thought of people trying to live in such environments.

Patti’s chosen means of artistic expression also demands vulgarity and the pitter-patter of F-bombs, and we do admire — if perhaps reluctantly — the profane skill with which she demolishes Danny during a late-night, parking-lot freestyle rap battle (an outcome he doesn’t accept graciously).

But Jasper pushes the vulgarity button too much, and too often; the persistent coarseness undercuts — even interferes with — the core story.

Until...

The dynamic shifts when Patti and Jheri attend an open-mic night at a local club, which concludes with a brief, eyeball-scalding “performance” by Basterd (Mamoudou Athie), a mysterious, dark-garbed musician who scuttles away after annoying the few patrons who’ve lingered for this final act. But Patti is transfixed; she senses a truly original spirit within this oddly shy and silent young man.

Once she finds his “studio” — concealed beyond the “Gates of Hell” — and successfully enlists his help in refining her own delivery, the film’s tone shifts to a more palatable and enjoyable gear. Indeed, Jasper even indulges in some actual humor (a gentleness nobody expects, given the aforementioned first act).

At which point — slowly, cautiously — we become well and truly involved with Patti and her unlikely band mates.

In fairness, we’re already on her side. Macdonald exudes pluck and persistence, leavened with generous dollops of vulnerability and self-doubt. Her quest seems impossible, but we respect her for trying; Jasper also recognizes the emotional charm that emerges when Macdonald softens Patti’s protective, pugnacious exterior, and allows her gentler side to emerge. Her scenes with Moriarty are particularly poignant, the two of them sharing a loving bond that neither is able to achieve with Barb.

Dhananjay is a hoot: unrestrained energy and athletic grace, with a cheerful enthusiasm that defies anybody not to smile and laugh in return. We’re not quite sure how Patti and Jheri might have hooked up in the first place, but there’s no question of his unswerving loyalty.

That said, Jheri’s willingness to spend considerable sums of his own money on Patti’s behalf can’t help raising eyebrows; it stretches friendship to an unlikely limit.

Athie is appropriately moody and enigmatic: a figure who easily would feel supernatural in a different sort of story. His pierced and otherwise, ah, personalized features notwithstanding, he has definite presence. Jasper plays on our curiosity, as we wonder where this relationship might go.

Lombardi is appropriately nasty as the cruelly patronizing Danny; popular rapper MC Lyte has a brief but significant role as DJ French Tips, whom Patti encounters while taking a second job as a caterer.

Rap and hip-hop fans will spot several more luminaries in fleeting appearances, including Skyler “Skyzoo” Taylor, Kirk Knight, Bishop Nehru and Aaron Rose. Several of them also are heard in the wall-to-wall hip-hop and rap-laden soundtrack. (Jasper wrote and performed the score and many of the songs.)

Underdog sagas, even clumsy ones, have an undeniable appeal. The question here is whether Patti deserves some form of salvation and/or success; the answer is a well-deserved absolutely. The journey is rather ragged, but — and this may come as a surprise — the destination will send you home with a smile.