02/27/98
MOVIE REVIEW: Caught Up
'Caught Up' gets tripped up by its plot

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

** (out of five)
Starring Bokeem Woodbine, Cynda Williams, Joseph Lindsey, Clifton Powell, Basil Wallace, Snoop Doggy Dogg, LL Cool J. A LIVE Entertainment release written and directed by Darin Scott. Rated R, contains violence, drug use, sex, nudity, profanity. Running time: 95 minutes.

There are shootings and car chases and double crosses and offbeat characters and bodies in car trunks and even tarot card readings galore in Caught Up. But despite all its busy-ness, the film is still a silly, boring mess.

It's just that there are too many slow spots in Darin Scott's convoluted and manufactured story. When the characters try to sort out the complex happenings, we find Scott holding back with too many secrets for too long. His previous film, the wacky, streetwise horror film Tales from the Hood, showed more promise of inventiveness than Scott can deliver in this mish-mash.

Bokeem Woodbine plays the film's hapless hero, Daryl Allen, an ex-con trying to go straight to be reunited with his young son, but hitting bumps in the road at every turn. A post-prison plan to open a nightclub goes awry when a pal who promises to get him the $10,000 from a bank turns out to be a bank robber and Daryl finds himself back in prison. It's a fast-paced and comical start to the film.

But after Daryl gets out of prison again, and yet again inadvertently finds himself on the edge of trouble -- with a body in his trunk and a masked man trying to murder him -- Caught Up gets tripped up by the complexities of its plot and its shallow characters.

People keep trying to frame Daryl, including his boss (Joseph Lindsey), who provides limousines and drivers to people who are outside the law, and a pretty but mysterious fortune teller named Vanessa (Cynda Williams), who happens to look exactly like Daryl's old girlfriend, the mother of his son. Woodbine and Williams have some chemistry, though the plot's machinations don't allow them to become a couple.

Hip-hop artists Snoop Doggy Dogg and LL Cool J make inconsequential appearances, paling behind the flashier role accorded Basil Wallace as a yellow caftan-wearing Rastafarian drug dealer who seems more ridiculous than scary. They're all just colorful added elements to a confusing script.

Scott gives the film ironic twists that are amusing, but by the time everything gets sorted out in over-the-top melodramatic style, all interest -- and hope -- has been abandoned.