My Review of "Coffee and Kareem"

Coffee and Kareem has just come out on Netflix. It's probably the perfect timing for this movie because everyone is running out of things to watch. They bring a comedy to our lives when we really need it but I think they may have had a few missteps when they thought of this movie.

This movie starts out with Kareem, played by Terrence Little Gardenhigh. He's this wannabe rap thug with a huge potty mouth. He's an only child to Vanessa, played by Taraji P. Henson. Vanessa is a strong single mom that takes crap from no one. She also happens to be dating a white cop named Coffee, played by Ed Helms.

Everything starts to unravel when Kareem finds out that his mother is going out with a white cop. He actually catches them having sex. Being the fake wannabe thug that he is, he tries to hire a goon to mess up Coffee. I know the story already sounds really messed up. I guess the exaggerated story-line is part of the joke.

While all this drama is happening, Coffee isn't exactly having a great day. Unfortunately he allowed a drug dealer to escape while he was on the way back to the police station. The media got wind of this information really fast and he's humiliated not only on national television but in the police precinct that he works in.

Kareem puts his plans into action but things go terribly awry. Coffee and Kareem have to work together in order to save their mother and arrest the drug dealers.

The plot kind of works but it's a big stretch of the imagination that anything like this would ever happen. It's a comedy though, we have to just go with it because everything is to the extreme.

There are a lot of jokes about race, egos and masculinity. Some of them are a little overdone as they go on and on about how effeminate each of them are. I would think that there are certain groups that would find this offensive but they're probably not watching movies like this. I'm not offended but even I thought some of the jokes were a little tired.

The language coming out of Kareem's mouth was absurd. I know a lot of people think that it's real funny or cute when little kids swear but it's getting kind of overdone. We saw this in Good Boys and we see it in a lot of films nowadays. As an adult seeing kids using language like this, I find it's horrible. I don't want kids to think that it's normal or okay for them to use such language. Reading that back to myself, I know I've become one of those old fogeys that complain about everything. I'm not sure of that though. Have you ever gone to a grocery store and you see kids acting terrible? Well that's what I feel when I see this kid swearing non-stop. You're seeing it and you just can't do anything about it. This time it's worse because you know other kids are going to watch this and might think it's okay to act that way.

Ed Helms does his usual shtick. I think he's become typecast to be a guy that constantly gets picked on. It's alright maybe once or twice but it seems like all the things that he's involved with has people picking on him. Why do we even have movies about people picking on other people when we're trying to point people into the non-bullying direction? In this movie Kareem was trying to teach Coffee how to bully others. The notion of being gay and aggressive is extremely non-PC. I'm surprised I haven't heard anything about that.

When it comes to the tone of the movie, they seemed to have made it R-rated seeing as there is so much gratuitous foul language. The only thing is that they kind of end it off as if it was a family film. What is their target audience? They made the story follow the usual buddy flick family film tropes but yet put in all this foul language to make it R-rated. I think this movie could have done better without the language.

There are some amusing moments in the film but they are few. I watched the whole thing without having the itch to shut it off so that's a plus. They had some elements that could have done well but I think that they should have figured out the audience that they really wanted this for and maybe watch it a few times and edit. Let's face facts, this movie is on Netflix so regardless of it being R-rated kids are going to see it. I think that's really unfortunate.

Overall, I didn't totally hate this movie. There are some redeeming factors and it kept my attention throughout the movie. The language and the old school mentality of masculinity was a little concerning. I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. If you're really bored and you have nothing else to watch, I would say re-watch another comedy instead of this one. I can't recommend this movie and I don't think I'll be watching it again.