Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

Black Panther

Meow-meow, meow-meow, meow-meow, meow-meow . . . Catman!

That's right, Black Panther is just another example of the Black man appropriating White culture.  Black Panther is clearly a Batman ripoff.  They're both billionaires.  They both come from royalty - Gotham or Wakandan.  They both use their nearly limitless fortunes to build signature weapons and vehicles.  They both dress like animals . . . in black, and they both serve up the exact same brand of vigilante justice.  Only Batman was doing it a quarter-century earlier!

Seriously though, Black Panther wears its racial agenda on its dashiki.  It's no coincidence that it's being released during the heart of Black History Month.  By the by, shouldn't that be African American History Month?  Either way, don't call Catman the African American Panther because he's less American than universal healthcare.  Black Panther/King T'Challa (Chadwick "Big Dick" Boseman) is 100% Black African, and he's proud.

He's the king of Wakanda, the most prosperous, culturally and technologically advanced country in Africa - and possibly the world.  The Wakandan people are hyperintelligent, compassionate and fiercely patriotic.  Which is why it makes less sense than a surfboard in the Sahara that they decide who their all-powerful ruler will be using ritual combat to the death.  It's also why T'Challa goes from prince to king to presumed corpse to king again over the course of one movie.

Because Hollywood is still Whiter than a Connecticut Xmas, people are going fucking bananaballs for the nearly all Black cast, crew and, presumably, caterers of Black Panther.  Call it an Affirmative Action flick. 

Director Ryan "The Coog" Coogler even turns the old trope of the one Black character always being the first to die in horror movies on its ear by killing off the one (of two) White characters in Black Panther, a South African (echoes of apartheid anyone?) played by Andy "Not Mo-capped For Once" Serkis, as soon as he can manage it.  Whether that's reparations or reverse racism, the saddest part about it is that Serkis' character is one of the funniest things Black Panther has to offer.

He's almost as funny as T'Challa's sister, Shuri (Letitia "Damn" Wright).  Shuri is not only T'Challa's Q/Alfred, she's the only one who treats him like a person and not a godhead.  Wright makes such an impression that I had to figure out where I'd seen her before.  It was in one of the standout episodes of the most recent season of Black Mirror.  Sorry, African American Mirror.

February 16, 2018