I Got the Hook-Up

One of the funniest urban comedies to come out since Ice Cube's Friday, I Got the Hook-Up is a series of hilarious characters and situations piled on top of one another so fast, you barely have time to breathe between laughs. Two hustlers from the hood, Black (rapper and entrepreneur Master P) and Blue (AJ Johnson), get their hands on a vanload of cell phones and sell the loot to their homies, thereby pissing off the phone company, their local drug dealer, and the Justice Department. Then the fun begins. Master P (who also wrote and produced) has been heavily influenced by Friday: Hook-Up has the same local bully, S&M dwarf, lecture on pot-smoking etiquette (puff, puff, pass), and Ice Cube (in a cameo). But he takes his film to another level by adding a crew of mentally handicapped gangbangers, lascivious senior citizens, a transvestite hooker, women with few clothes but lots of tattoos, and Snoop Doggy Dogg. At the Showcase Cinemas 9 and 10.

-- Nicholas Patterson