Back on the Strip
An indie comedy, “Back on the Strip,” tells the story of a young man who dreams of becoming a magician but is taught to be an exotic dancer by middle-aged ex-strippers. It’s thrown together.
It would sink like a stone and become unwatchable if not for the actors’ charisma which is considerable and the overall lightness of touch: This movie knows it’s here to make people laugh, damn it, and if that means telling shameless jokes or deploying sight gags that would make your grandmother blush, so be it; humor rewards risk.
The strippers were stars in 1990s Las Vegas. They called themselves The Chocolate Chips. Wesley Snipes plays their leader, Luther, aka “Mr. Big,” whose career ended when a car crash shattered his leg; J.B. Smoove is Amos, a preacher by day and self-righteous scold by night; Bill Bellamy is Tyriq, a stay at home dad to four daughters he fathered with his female-bodybuilder wife; Faizon Love is Desmond, a garage owner who has gained 100 pounds since his stripping days; Gary Owen is Xander, a white doctor with a successful breast-augmentation clinic who used to fool the other Chocolate Chips into thinking he was black (more on this later).
Any one of these actors has more charm and comic timing in his pinkie toe than most performers have in their entire bodies. As does Moore II as Merlin.
Unfortunately, the movie isn’t about The Chocolate Chips at all: It’s about Merlin (Spence Moore II), the young hero we meet when he’s still in high school in Los Angeles. He’s madly in love with Robin (Raigan Harris), his best friend and magic-show stage assistant one of those lovable cipher hero comedy beautiful smart poised cheerful girls women that exist only to love and support ambitious guys like Merlin.
He wants to go to Las Vegas and become a big time illusionist; he tells Robin of his dream, which then fuels the movie’s many subsequent plot turns. Unfortunately, the high school magic show sequence is a disaster: Merlin messes up his tricks himself, then has them sabotaged by the leader of a rival gangsta-rap group from Beverly Hills all white kids who pretend they’re thugs. The dude pulls down Merlin’s pants and underwear onstage at the high school talent show.
And so we learn of Merlin’s true gift: He’s hung like an altarpiece.
Fast forward a few years after college to Merlin: he is working as a birthday party clown with a trio of other clowns and still dreaming of going to Vegas when he runs into Robin again. Unfortunately, he also meets her snobby, condescending boyfriend about to be fiance, Blaze (Ryan Alexander Holmes), who claims to be a comedian but is mostly an “influencer” that spends what seems like every waking minute recording himself and his posse and posting the footage online.
Merlin’s supportive single mother Verna (Tiffany Haddish), easily the film’s raunchiest character by far, helps her despondent son make his big move to Vegas by calling up her former boss Rita (Colleen Camp), an old stoner who runs a run-down motel with a burned out neon-sign (the only working letters spell out “VAGINA”), and arranging for him to stay there while he’s auditioning for magic gigs. Of course Verna, being the hardcore realist she is, has an ulterior motive: she figures her son will have a better shot at acclaiming what’s in his top hat if he showcases the miracle in his trousers.
If you’re reading this thinking “I’ve seen this nice guy tries to steal nice girl away from rotten fiancé configuration a million times what about the aging strippers played by can’t-miss character actors?” you’re just gonna have to deal with it.
The movie works overtime on keeping Merlin and Robin from realizing their destiny until right up to the climax that rom-com fans would see coming from 20 kielbasas away even if the main couple hadn’t discussed one of its most beloved TV variations on A Different World while watching that episode in reruns.
Directed by Chris Spencer, who also wrote the screenplay with Eric Daniel, “Back on the Strip” is uninterested in anything that doesn’t interest it such as creating actual personalities for its romantic leads, who are sweet but borderline-blank ingenues; or making us believe young Merlin is a good magician, or even a competent one. Verna tells us in her voiceover narration (which often sounds like what it was: forced writing created to solve storytelling problems) that Merlin is a brilliant illusionist who wows audiences. But we never see him do anything more complicated than pull a string of handkerchiefs from his mouth or produce an object from behind another person’s ear.
“Back on the Strip” gets better once the Chocolate Chips reunite and start rehearsing and reconnecting, and becomes great during the section that falls most briefly in love with all character actors. The movie gives each of them a dedicated subplot plus foolproof bits of recurring comic business which allow it to play to its only great strength: an ability to create enough of an atmosphere of trust that its performers can cut loose and clown in a way that goes beyond sketch comedy riffing and into something closer to surrealism.
Amos has supposedly left the “sinful” stripper life behind but bumps, grinds and dry-humps pews during sermons whenever he feels the spirit move him. Tyriq’s identity is so tied up with fatherhood that when he does his new routine, he instinctively starts combing women’s hair and folding their wraps in perfect squares small enough to fit into a diaper bag.
The other guys are shocked when Xander shows up and turns out to be white none of them had any clue about anything in the ’90s and there being no details given about how Xander pulled off the magic trick (an even more impressive illusion than anything Merlin attempts), makes this contrivance funnier, especially when he’s coming to terms with the racial privilege he’s always denied having.
Qualitatively speaking, “Back on the Strip” is somewhere between a second-rate “Saturday Night Live” cash-in movie and a 1990s indie comedy in which the ensemble cast far outshines the screenplay. There are a few genuinely good comic setpieces, several that are fitfully amusing, and maybe another dozen moments that allow older actors to show sides of their talent (often ignored) most notably Love, who demonstrates that he could carry an entire romantic comedy by himself if someone would write a smart script tailored to his gifts and looks.
What it’s really worth watching for is the hardworking cast, especially Snipes, who seems to be having a career renaissance lately and adds yet another feather to his cap here as a once-formidable suave man who walks with a cane after a car accident but still appears to be in charge of every room he enters even though he can’t strip anymore.
The filmmakers often cut to Snipes’ reactions in ensemble scenes not because Big is always an essential part of what’s happening (sometimes he’s just one of several witnesses), but simply because Snipes’ acting is so rich: You can almost feel the other characters acquiring depth just because Big is paying attention to them and being affected by whatever they’re going through. This isn’t Snipes coasting on audience fondness rooted in earlier eras; it’s something new from him, a real-seeming man with experience in his voice and an unwritten novel in his eyes.
It may be the film’s best magic trick.“Back on the Strip” about a young man whose dream of becoming a magician takes him into middle age as an exotic dancer under the tutelage of retired strippers is precisely what I hoped it would be based on those slapped-together indie comedies you occasionally run across at festivals or discover late at night on streaming services when nobody else knows about them except the people who made them and their moms (who still think they’re good).
It would probably collapse completely and become unwatchable were it not for the boundless charisma of the actors and the lightheartedness of the whole enterprise: This movie knows that its reason for being is to make people laugh, at whatever cost, and that in general, the shamelessness of a joke or sight gag is directly proportional to its size.
The strippers performed together at one Las Vegas resort in the mid-1990s. They went by the name The Chocolate Chips. Their leader, Luther aka “Mr. Big” (Snipes), ended his career with a broken leg after being hit by a car. Amos the preacher (J.B. Smoove) is righteous on Sundays and Saturday nights as well; Tyriq (Bill Bellamy) is a stay-at-home dad to four daughters he sired with his wife (a female bodybuilder); Desmond (Love) owns a garage and has gained 100 pounds since his stripping days; Xander (Gary Owen) is a white doctor with a successful breast augmentation clinic who fooled all the other Chocolat
This is about a young Merlin (Spence Moore II) and his career goals as well as romantic troubles. Will he land his ideal job and win the affection of his dream girl? You know, we know. But the film knows this too, yet it still sticks with Merlin, so that “Back on the Strip” becomes something like one of those old Hollywood studio movies where they built a project around veteran movie comedians that people actually came to see (like the Marx Brothers), but then subordinated their clowning to a romance between two comparatively bland leads.
When we meet Merlin, he’s a high school senior in Los Angeles who’s in love with Robin (Raigan Harris), his best friend and magic act partner: one of those cheerful, poised, beautiful smart cipher girls that lovable go-getter heroes often have in comedies. He wants to go to Vegas and hit big as an illusionist, and he tells her about it.
But alas, at the high school magic show, not only does everything go wrong because of him but then it gets even worse because of Malakai (a.k.a. Kai; Udo Kier), the leader of a group of white self-styled gangsta rappers from Beverly Hills who pull down Merlin’s pants and underwear onstage during what was supposed to be part of his trick. When we see this exposed appendage nestled within its undergarment for the first time while Merlin has been put into a trance by Verna’s special herb blend that causes hallucinations equal parts full-on psychedelia-extravaganza and MTV Video Music Awards style on stage smoke machine haze it looks like a kielbasa folded in half.
A few years later: after college, when he should be well on his way toward achieving all those dreams he talked about earlier but instead finds himself working as yet another birthday party clown in a team of clowns, still hoping to get to Vegas one day he runs into Robin again, but this time she’s got a snotty, condescending boyfriend who’s about to become her fiancé.
His name is Blaze (Ryan Alexander Holmes). He claims he’s a comedian, but mostly he’s an “influencer” whose life seems to consist mainly of recording himself and his posse on his phone and posting the footage online or, as he puts it: “I’m just out here tryna get these hashtags popping!” At least that’s what it sounds like he says; it’s hard to tell sometimes because of his accent. Merlin only knows Verna isn’t going to stop smoking weed long enough to help him solve any problems that arise from this newfound romance with Blaze.
Nevertheless, Momma V gives her son the push he needs when she discovers him sulking around her apartment in a clown suit after the latest birthday party went bust (because the kids were all mesmerized by their phones instead of watching his act), so she picks up the phone and calls up her old employer Rita (Colleen Camp), who runs a rundown motel with a burned out neon sign (the only working letters spell out “VAGINA”) not far from the strip and hooks Merlin up with a room while he auditions for magic gigs in town. Of course Verna has an ulterior motive for doing this: being such a hardcore realist herself has taught her that people will be more likely to appreciate what her boy can do with his top hat if they’re first made aware of the miracle hidden within his trousers.
If you’re reading this now and thinking, “Yeah yeah yeah I’ve seen this nice guy tries to steal nice girl away from rotten fiancé configuration about 10 million times before but where are the aging strippers played by can’t-miss character actors?” sorry, but you’ll just have to deal with it.
The movie is going to work its way through all the hoops and hurdles that keep Merlin and Robin from realizing their destiny together right up to the end the climax of which will be obvious to any dyed in the wool romantic comedy fan from about 20 kielbasas away, even if they never discussed one of the most beloved TV versions of it on “A Different World” while watching a rerun of said episode at some point in their lives.
“Back on the Strip” is a film directed by Chris Spencer, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Daniel. However, it doesn’t pretend to be concerned about anything that doesn’t really interest it, such as making the romantic leads actual characters instead of a couple of sweet but near-blank ingenues; or even making us believe that young Merlin is any good as a magician.
Verna tells us in her voice-over narration which often sounds so forced that it feels like it was mainly written to solve storytelling problems that Merlin is a brilliant illusionist who wows audiences. But we never see him do anything more complicated than pull a string of handkerchiefs from his mouth or produce an object from behind somebody’s ear.
“Back on the Strip” gets better once the Chocolate Chips get back together and start rehearsing and reconnecting, and very good indeed during the relatively short stretch where it falls in love with its character actors. The movie gives all of them not just dedicated subplots but foolproof bits of recurring comic business that allow the film to play to its one great strength: creating enough of an atmosphere of trust that performers can cut loose and clown in a way that goes beyond sketch-comedy riffing and into something more like the surreal.
Amos has supposedly left behind the “sinful” stripper life but bumps, grinds, and dry-humps pews during sermons whenever the spirit moves him. Tyriq’s identity is so tied up with fatherhood that when he does his new routine, he instinctively starts combing women’s hair and folding their wraps into perfect squares small enough to fit inside a diaper bag.
The other guys are shocked when Xander shows up for rehearsal and turns out to be white none of them had any idea in the ’90s and the fact that Xander essentially hand-waves away how he pulled off this magic trick (which is a more impressive illusion than anything Merlin attempts) just makes the contrivance funnier, especially when he’s coming to terms with the racial privilege he’s always denied having.
“Back on the Strip” is like a lower “Saturday Night Live” money-making film and an indie comedy of the ’90s where the cast is much better than the script. It has some really good comic set pieces and some others that are intermittently funny, and maybe a dozen more moments that allow older actors to display parts of their talent which usually go untapped (most notably Love, who demonstrates that he could carry an entire romance by himself if anyone ever bothered to write a great script around his gifts and looks).
It’s worth watching for its hardworking cast, particularly Snipes, who appears to be in the midst of a career revival lately and adds another feather to his cap here as a once-dashing man who walks with a cane because of an auto accident that ended his stripping days but nevertheless carries himself like he’s still the boss whenever he enters a room.
The filmmakers often cut to his reactions in ensemble scenes not because Big is always part and parcel of what’s happening (sometimes he’s just one among several witnesses), but because Snipes is so richly I want to say “specific,” but I mean something closer to “generous.” You can almost feel the other characters acquiring depth simply because Big notices them and responds to whatever they’re going through.
Snipes doesn’t trade on audience affection rooted in prior eras; he’s doing something new here, playing a man with experience in his voice and an unwritten novel in his eyes. His performance is the movie’s best sleight-of-hand trick.
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