Baby Boy

At the heart of director John Singleton's return to his Boyz N the Hood roots is an unsympathetic character named Jody (played by R&B hip-hop artist Tyrese Gibson), whose age--at 20-years-old, he's a mere baby--is supposed to excuse him for being a selfish, shallow, disdainful, disloyal, disrespectful, lying, cheating, irresponsible hypocrite with a huge chip on his shoulder. Baby Boy is supposed to be Jody's journey into manhood, signaled by his insincere last-reel epiphany that maybe he should stop running around on one of the two girls who have already borne his children, start taking some responsibility, get a job and support his kids. Well, duh. In the meantime he fights with his girlfriend (Taraji P. Henson), two ex-cons, his mom's boyfriend (Ving Rhames) and his girl's ex-boyfriend (Snoop Dogg). While Gibson does an adequate job of depicting Jody's self-imposed discord, it doesn't change the fact that the character is insufferably lazy, callow and self-centered. Not recommended. (R. Blackwelder)