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Eve's Bayou (1997)

Rate: 4
Viewed: 4/18

4/18: The most appropriate title of Eve's Bayou should be Louisiana's Three Spoiled Black Children.

How annoying the child stars are. They keep ruining the film and have no acting skills to speak of. The apparent lack of story doesn't help, either, making it impossible for me to get through the film in one sitting. Consequently, the snoozefest took me one solid week to finish.

Samuel L. Jackson has a minor, albeit one-dimensional, role, but he plays a lying philander who can't keep his johnson in his pants. His co-star Lynn Whitfield, a one-time Josephine Baker, is too frigid to make a difference; it's impossible to tell what her problem is. The same goes for the rest of the characters who are hyper-melodramatic.

The biggest laughter of the show is Mozelle's clairvoyant abilities. *cough* Right... Running in a close second is the sight of Vondie Curtis-Hall who appears out of nowhere in front of her door with his fake long hair. The only explainable reason for his gratuitous character is that he's the director's husband. Oh, don't get me started with the angry black woman with her white-painted face. There's a male relative in the house, but who the heck is he?!?

The time period is confusing. Does the setting take place during the 30's, or is this the 60's? At any rate, nobody does a good job of portraying either because everything feels like the 90's.

Once again, not much happens. The father dies, and the film takes two hours for him to do so. The rest is a filler with many unbearable stretches of how the family's spoiled black children behave. Perhaps the most interesting moment, which occurs at the end, is when Eve used a stethoscope on her chest and discovered she could hear her own heart beating. That's funny because I didn't think she had any.

All in all, Eve's Bayou is truly Louisiana's Three Spoiled Black Children.

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