D.C. MOVIE GUYS

King’s Ransom
Directed by Jeff Byrd
Terrorizing audiences at theatres nationwide beginning 4/22/2005
1 *
I recently saw King’s Ransom at a preview screening and I feel dirty.
The 19th FilmFest DC opened with a tedious Bengali melodrama entitled Raincoat. In both a final title card and in his remarks afterwards, the director had the temerity to compare his film to the O. Henry short story “The Gift of the Magi” and to claim that his film was adapted from this much beloved and well-known story. They are similar in that both story and movie feature a man and a woman, but that is about it.
A more obvious borrowing from O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” takes place with the story of King’s Ransom, but nobody involved here is capable of appreciating the comic possibilities of either the story or its modern-day cinematic adaptation, Ruthless People. So the result is a limp comedy in which all the jokes are lamentable broadsides meant to adhere to the rigorous standards of contemporary urban comedy and with no higher ambition than amusing the widest of audiences.
Yes, you guessed it; the movie runs 95 very long minutes. On the plus side, when Anthony Anderson commits to a script, it does not give Cuba Gooding, Jr. a chance to reconsider.
Anderson plays (to the degree that the severely limited talents of one of the leads from Kangaroo Jack is capable) Malcolm King, a successful Chicago marketing entrepreneur who is about to both: sell his company at a substantial profit; jettison wifey, Renee (The Bernie Mac Show’s Kellita Smith) so as to continue his affair with stripper-turned-administrative-assistant-turned-corporate-officer Peaches (Regina Hall)—example of humor in King’s Ransom: Peaches has an ex-con brother named Herb; and this is one of the better jokes. Not wanting to split the new wealth with the old wife, Malcolm decides to fake his own kidnapping. So beloved in the office that his pet name with everyone is “jerk,” three other groups decide to kidnap the King as well including white trash Corey (an underused Jay Mohr), the wife, and one of Malcolm’s former executives (Nicole Ari Parker) whose resume is as padded as the rest of her and has recently been passed over for a promotion by the Marilyn Monroe-channeling Peaches.
Funnier movies have depended on lesser setups, but the King’s Ransom brain trust of screenwriter Wayne Conley (an undistinguished television writer making his feature debut) and director Jeff Byrd is incapable of eliciting anything more than a few chuckles. No one deviates an inch from the urban comedy formula and the efforts of talented people (most notably Mohr and Smith) are wasted.
Why should your time and money be consigned to the same fate
–Bill Henry

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