Movie Scene
At the Movies: 'Pootie Tang'

By Christy Lemire
AP Entertainment Writer

POOTIE TANG "Pootie Tang," a Paramount Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for sex-related material, language and drug content. Running time: 82 minutes.

Aspirin is what you need to sit through "Pootie Tang."

Because if you didn't have a headache when you walked into the theater, you surely will have one stumbling out.

Calling the movie incoherent doesn't even begin to describe it. It's more like an audiovisual assault. If the United States ever goes to war again, we can use "Pootie Tang" as a torture device against our enemies.

Pootie Tang " an unintelligible, singing, superhero ladies man " is a character from Chris Rock's HBO show. Played by Lance Crouther, he's a role model for kids, doing public service announcements against malt liquor, cigarettes and fast food.

He's also a wildly popular recording artist; he can record silence and it becomes an instant radio hit. And chicks dig his style; he usually goes shirtless in a fur coat with leather pants, and he always wears gold-tinted sunglasses and the magical belt his father (Rock in one of many supporting roles) gave him as a child, which he uses as a whip to beat his enemies.

But Pootie Tang's words are a mixture of English and who knows what else, and he says such things as "Baby, I'm gonna sine your pitty on the runny kine. Sipi-tai!"

Sipi ... say what?

Somehow, everybody understands him and looks up to him. That's why the evil Dick Lecter (played by Robert Vaughn, the former Man from U.N.C.L.E. who must be the Man from Hunger these days if he's taking roles like this) schemes to steal Pootie's likeness to use in ads for his brands of malt liquor, cigarettes and fast food.

Lecter, CEO of the very white LecterCorp, sends busty girlfriend Ireenie (Jennifer Coolidge, doing a deranged version of her Stifler's mom character from "American Pie") to seduce Pootie.

(Let's take a moment to acknowledge one of the few genuinely funny moments in the movie, when Ireenie seduces Pootie in the potato chip aisle of a grocery store with Bell Biv Devoe's "Poison" playing in the background. That was a great, cheesy, early '90s dance song, and it's perfect for the scene.)

The plan works, and Pootie's good name in town (referred to in film as a place outside Gary, Ind., called Chicago) is besmirched. He becomes a pariah for peddling such filthy products and hides at the country house of his good friend, the flamboyant Biggie Shorty (Wanda Sykes), until he returns to fight for his dignity.

Between scenes of Pootie growing corn on the farm, and Chicago in utter chaos in his absence, are snippets of Pootie and go-go girls dancing to R&B music with colorful, psychedelic swirls behind them. All of this is supposed to recall the mood of '70s blaxploitation films, but instead feels jumbled.

Similar to this year's "The Anniversary Party," this is an example of a bunch of friends getting together and making a movie about an inside joke.

Writer-director Louis C.K., Crouther and Sykes all worked on "Down to Earth," Rock's totally unnecessary " though successful " remake of "Heaven Can Wait," which came out earlier this year. And the three of them were part of the writing team that won an Emmy in 1999 for "The Chris Rock Show." These people have Emmys!

But if you're not in on the joke " and the vast majority of the moviegoing public won't be " it's hard to break a smile, much less care.