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So he plans a party for her which of course leads to complications and hijinks. Like the last film, it was a direct to video fare and even features a cameo by Kid 'N Play reprising the roles of their fictional selves. In the years that have passed since the third movie, the pair now have their own record label - accomplishing a goal they decided on at the end of the second movie and pursued throughout the third. No other characters from the Kid n Play era are featured or mentioned. The first movie, released in 1990, was centered around a house party hosted by Play as his folks were out of town.
How ‘House Party’ Brought the Black Teenage Experience to Mainstream - The Ringer
How ‘House Party’ Brought the Black Teenage Experience to Mainstream.
Posted: Mon, 09 Mar 2020 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Cast
In “House Party,” walking a “project girl” to the door means worrying about snipers on rooftops. It’s a world where obese parents slurp Dick Gregory’s Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet, not Ultra Slim-Fast. And where cursing racist cops to their faces is not considered bold but matter-of-fact. He made short films at Yale, graduating in 1974, but couldn’t find a place in the white-dominated mainstream film-making Establishment. I asked myself, ‘How can I connect with the black community, which in my mind was my primary audience. House Party is a series of hip-hop comedy films that began as starring vehicles for the rap duo Kid 'N Play (Christopher Reid and Christopher Martin).
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The New Yorkers are the latest in a continuing wave of African-American film makers--Spike Lee leading the charge--who are trying to get their foot in the proverbial Hollywood door without compromising their personal visions. This section includes characters who will appear or have appeared in more than two films in the series. There’s a good chance House Party’s influence may never fade. In February 2018, LeBron James and his SpringHill Entertainment partner Maverick Carter announced that they’d be co-producing a modern take on the film with a script written by Stephen Glover and Jamal Olori, most notably of FX’s Atlanta. Both Reid and Martin are eager to see how the concept translates in the modern era and for the new handlers to succeed at that.
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“Even though you had Beat Street and Wild Style, there was nothing like this,” says Christopher “Play” Martin, who portrayed the party’s suave host. Clueless sparked a teen movie revival during the mid-’90s and Cruel Intentions supposedly put the genre 6 feet deep at the decade’s close, but House Party set the standard. "House Party" is first of all a musical, and best approached in that spirit.
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Claws star Karrueche Tran is a native Angeleno, so her cameo as herself at this house party, just makes sense. Tran appears in a scene where the party’s DJ, Vic (played by DC Young Fly), is so under the influence, he can no longer play music. Soirée, there are plenty of A-listers that make the rounds at this house party, running the gamut from actor and screenwriter Lena Waithe to entrepreneur Mark Cuban. The most special cameo of the film, however, might be the brief appearance of the original franchise stars, Kid ‘n Play, who steal the show in a zany party scene that won’t soon be forgotten. As party dreams go, this one has an undeniable logic (and potential for disaster), but the thing that really strikes one about it is that its goal is as avaricious as it is coldly aspirational. It’s at once a party and a scam, and while the movie, directed by the music-video veteran Calmatic (it’s his first feature), is aware of all that, “House Party” doesn’t exactly strategize ways to make the chicanery funny.
“And as soon as they saw us do it, they gave us the thumbs up.” Hudlin gave the rest of the cast similar latitude. It doesn’t matter how we get there, but I want to get there in your voice,’” Reid says. John Witherspoon, already a legend in Hudlin’s eyes, was cast off his work in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, Hollywood Shuffle, and The Richard Pryor Show. And Hudlin, a huge Parliament-Funkadelic fan, wrote a role specifically for George Clinton—the funk deity has a cameo as a fast-talking DJ at a bougie affair—so he might have the chance to meet him. Full Force, who were already known for their own music as well as writing and producing for Kurtis Blow and Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, wound up in House Party as the bullies because the script already included descriptions of them. “It said something like, They get accosted by three bullies with great physiques and Jheri curls, somebody like Full Force,” says singer Lou “Bowlegged Lou” George, who played Pee-Wee.
The cast includes two rap groups, Kid ‘n Play and Full Force, as heroes and villains, and two actress-dancers, A. The major adult character, Robin Harris’ Pops, is a stand-up comic, a wizard at slow, nasty timing. Young Kid has been invited to a party at his friend Play's house. But Kid doesn't know that three of the thugs at school have decided to give him a lesson in behavior.
Singer Tinashe has one of the most memorable cameos in the film. Playing herself, she instigates an epic dance-off in the middle of the party, which results in her recruiting Kevin’s love interest, Venus (played by Karen Obilom) to be a dancer for her upcoming tour. There are many celebrity cameos, from Mya to Snoop Dogg to Lil Wayne to Lena Waithe, but the best thing in the movie is Kid Cudi playing a delectably pretentious version of himself. He’s got the timing, and the mystique, that the rest of “House Party” lacks.
Hip-hop was written into House Party’s script, but it went over the heads of many studio executives. Although the genre was rising in popularity during the late ’80s, and hip-hop-centric films like 1983’s Wild Style, 1984’s Beat Street, and 1985’s Krush Groove had become cult favorites, it still wasn’t on the average exec’s radar. Grillo says the staff at New Line’s New York office was well aware of hip-hop’s rising influence because they rode the subways and walked the streets, unlike their Los Angeles counterparts.
House Party—the first movie Hudlin wrote and directed—isn’t a novel concept. A teen from Anywhere, USA, gets in trouble at school and is forbidden by his strict father from going to a friend’s party, an order he obviously disregards. From there, the kid spends nearly 100 minutes trying to avoid ass-kickings from three muscle-bound tormentors, two racist cops, and one pissed-off father, all while hedging his bet with two girls who have varying degrees of interest in him. But despite the simple formula, House Party stands in stark contrast to many of the teen films that preceded it—because, as Hudlin mentioned, these kids were black. Kid ‘n Play, portraying rival rappers, incarnated the film’s spiky-but-suave, raunchy-but-romantic tone.
As the title suggest, each movies find the protagonists hosting a party, though at different locations and for different reasons. But the movie does exactly what a cheerful, unpretentious genre piece should do. It connects with its subject and audience, gives us some music, laughs, a little sentiment.
