Belly

Director Hype Williams displays the excess of style and shortage of substance characteristic of his music video background in this story about (as much as I could discern) the millennium eve rush to self-destruction of a group of urban teens who shoot whatever they can't fit up their noses or roll around with in their beds. Williams pulls every trick in the shot book, very few of which are motivated by the material. (When he runs out of gimmick shots he just plops the camera down where ever it may fall, which results in intimate dialogue recorded in extreme long shots.) As for the performers, everyone is, well, animated, in a cast that unnecessarily boasts of several current rap stars. Technical credits are very good, though Spike Lee veteran cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed, whether by his own choice or not, consistently underlights. For a film that glamorizes violence, drug use, and street crime, Belly ends with a moralizing coda so uncharacteristic of what preceded it that it must have been tacked on in an attempt to head off its critics. In film, though, as on the street, you can run but you can't hide: Belly is an impressive music video, but it has as its subject a very bad song. Not recommended. (S. C. Sickles)[DVD Review--Mar. 9, 2004--Artisan, 2 discs, 105 min., R, $26.98--Making its second appearance on DVD, Hype Williams' 1998 Belly has built a large following since its initial release, which might explain the appearance of the new double-disc “special edition.” Boasting a sharp widescreen transfer, several sound options (including DTS-ES, and Dolby Digital EX), the first disc features the film, a director's commentary, a deleted scene (a rather pointless stripper sequence that is censored), a four-minute “Grand Finale” montage music video, and--the best--a 39-minute section with eight spoken-word monologues, a hip-hop number, and a cool tap sequence. The second disc is a 34-minute music CD with eight tracks from the soundtrack. Bottom line: although the spoken word segment is interesting, the “special edition” is not all that special, given the fact that the commentary track was already on the first release, and the Belly soundtrack with all 18 songs is readily available, making this version optional at best.]