3440. Booty Call (1997)

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tommy Davidson, Vivica A. Fox

Director: Jeff Pollack

Running Time: 79 mins

Booty Call is an American film about two men who try to hook up with a pair of young women, but circumstances keep getting in their way.

Playing the ‘deliberately annoying’ card is often a risky move in comedy, but it’s one that Booty Call, for the most part, pulls off. Though not exactly a hilarious movie, Booty Call sparks a few chuckles and smirks with its fluffy and harmless story, bolstered by a quartet of impressively likable performances.

The premise is simple. Two men meet two women, and despite the men’s desperation to have sex with them on one hectic night, circumstances keep getting in their way. Most of those circumstances are caused by the actions of one of the women, from her excessively demanding attitude to her concerns about safety in hooking up with the men.

This is where the ‘deliberately annoying’ card comes in, as Tamala Jones comes up with reason after reason after reason that prevents her date, Tommy Davidson, from sleeping with her. Next door, meanwhile, Jamie Foxx and Vivica A. Fox are desperate to spend the night together, but Jones and Davidson’s quarrels drag them away from a peaceful bit of intimacy.

It’s fair to say that, while a lot of the reasons that Jones’ demands get in the way of the boys’ sex drive are perfectly genuine, most are deliberately excessive, but Booty Call manages to deliver the comedy to the point that her demands aren’t exactly infuriating.

The repeating gag of the boys getting so close only to fall all the way back down does get a little tiresome after a while – not an easy feat in a 79 minute movie – but despite the film’s efforts to be ‘deliberately annoying’, it never has you grating your teeth to the extent that you might expect.

There’s not much else to the movie and, apart from a couple of jokes about Indian and Chinese people that definitely wouldn’t fly nowadays, Booty Call is a simple and fairly harmless affair, albeit not one that will have rolling on the floor in laughter. So, that’s why I’m giving it a 7.0 overall.