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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, April 4, 2003

N-word big part of 'DysFunKtional Family'

By Dan DeLuca
Knight Ridder Newspapers

 •  DYSFUNKTIONAL FAMILY

Directed by George Gallo. Written by and starring Eddie Griffin.

Running time: 1 hour, 20 mins.

Parent's guide: R (profanity, adult themes)

In "DysFunKtional Family," Eddie Griffin is as rude, crude and offensive as he wants to be.

The comedian last seen in "Undercover Brother" wants to shock and awe us with his Richard Pryor outrageousness. He uses the N word about 10,000 times — usually as a term of endearment, for everyone from his mother to the audience to Jesus Christ. He's both brazenly homophobic and racist — at one point he sees a bearded man in a turban and yells: "Bin Laden — I knew you was around here!"

But if Griffin is often boorish, he also can be wickedly hilarious. Not to mention that, as he roams the stage with a mischievous, big-toothed grin, he's funny just to look at. "DysFunKtional" is a stand-up movie with window dressing, with Griffin shooting for Martin Lawrence stature. Griffin's headed home to Kansas City for a family reunion, so we get to meet his truly dysfunctional (and oddly endearing) family, from Uncle Bucky the former pimp and drug dealer to Uncle Curtis the porn aficionado.

Griffin makes hay of his familial psychodrama, whether joking about getting beaten by his mother or recounting meeting his father for the first time as a teenager. His riffs on Michael Jackson — who he says "looks like the female monkey in the 'Planet of the Apes'" — are deadly. And his routine about the differences between cat lovers and dog lovers demonstrates how perceptive and just flat-out funny he can be when he's not trying so hard to shock us.