Dysfunktional Family

Director George Gallo’s movie intersperses a filmed concert by comedian Eddie Griffin with scenes of a visit to his old Kansas City neighborhood and his family. Like those proverbial million monkeys with their typewriters, Griffin manages to get off a halfway-funny line every now and again. But for the most part his “humor” is extraordinarily ugly—foul-mouthed, homophobic, sexist and racist. (In one revolting moment on a Kansas City street, he screams at a passing turbaned Sikh: “Hey, Osama bin Laden, I found you, man!”) Griffin’s affection for his family may be genuine, but it seems to exist side by side with a barely controlled rage; the film’s most interesting (and uncomfortable) shots show his mother sitting in the concert audience, a painful smile frozen on her face, trying to be a good sport.