Movie Review: "Patti Cake$" Would Like to Be the Next "Hustle and Flow"

Finally, Hustle and Flow as it was always meant to be told. Wait...

Katy Perry, no doubt exhausted by her “sorry for all the culture appropriating” tour, will be relieved by the release of Patti Cake$, a drama about a Caucasian Jersey girl who seeks to escape her life or perpetual paycheck-chasing by rebranding herself as a rapper named ‘Killa P’.

Danielle Macdonald, an Aussie newcomer, plays Killa P aka Patti Cake$ aka Patricia “Dumbo” Dumbrowski. She’s a magnetic performer. Compelling, charismatic and surprisingly adept at spitting fire, Macdonald is solely responsible for making Patricia’s journey a sympathetic one. She, miraculously, escapes unscathed. Even elevated. (Which, I suppose, is cultural appropriation doing its work.)

I can’t extend that magnanimity to writer-director Geremy Jasper, who contrived this story, apparently from his own life, oblivious to the optics. White people can relate to and be moved by hip hop; they can create it well enough too. Acknowledging that is not the fatal flaw of Patti Cake$.

Its main issue is that it conflates being told off for cultural appropriation (as Patti is) with the experience of being told not to reach for your dreams and be whoever it is you want to be in this life. Rachel Dolezal would love this movie.

(It also commits the following sins, in no particular order: 1. Patti seems to bring pre-written lyrics to a freestyle rap battle and is not penalised. 2. All the rap-rock she makes with her mates sounds like it was produced by Rick Rubin, as if the entire last fifteen years of hip hop didn’t happen. 3. Cathy Moriarty, 56, is forced to play a decrepit, septuagenarian grandmother. 4. Patti's rap name has a dollar sign in it, yet she is not an official member of A$AP Mob. She’s not even sponsored for membership by A$AP Ferg!)

Patti Cakes

Jasper at least assembled a stellar cast for his problematic tale. Patti’s always-hustling partner Jheri is played by the vivacious Siddharth Dhananjay, while their quiet, metal-loving producer, Basterd the Antichrist, is brought to life with sweetness and intensity by Mamoudou Athie, our new Adam Driver.

Cabaret comedian Bridget Everett (best known for Inside Amy Schumer) does fine work with her showcase role as Patti’s failed-singer mother. But like Athie, Dhananjay, Moriarty and Macdonald, she’s in service of a movie that, at its core, does not work. I personally found it difficult to root for Patti, knowing she was stepping on many unseen others. If the film had addressed that troubling reality (rather than showing her bullied by those who think she’s fake) or elaborated on the way in which people relate to (or escape with) the experiences conveyed in hip hop music, Patti Cake$ could have been something special.

The flick instead settles on cloying conventionality and an underdog-plays-the-big-concert finale that was so embarrassing to behold, my face literally burned red throughout.

It doesn’t help that the inspiration for Jasper’s visual flourishes appear to be exclusively torn from the positively ancient Up in Smoke tour. Geez, at least rip off something relevant.

2/5

In cinemas September 14. Rated M for coarse language and sexual references.