Trippin'

Another high-school comedy that gets a facelift by going hip-hop and getting jacked up on testosterone -- think Clueless meets Booty Call. The ethnocentric colloquialism of the title is the favorite pastime of G (Deon Richmond), who dazes off in class, on the job, and at the family breakfast table, envisioning voluptuous "Fly Girls" offering up their booty to him. G can't score any real-life action, though his two-bit hood sidekick, June (Donald Adeosun Faison) has scooped nearly every girl in school under the pretext of taking each one to the prom.

David Raynr's film is incredibly sophomoric and frequently borders on misogyny, but as G falls for the school's wholesome prom queen (a sincere, doe-eyed Maia Campbell) and his parents hit him with the reality of college and the future, the movie struggles for dramatic balance. A few of the daydream sequences -- G's parents berating a college recruiter about the availability of booty on campus; the "Schwarzen-Nigger," "Terminator" shtick in a BBQ joint -- are uproarious, but Trippin' tries to get real too late in the game. At the Showcase (Seekonk 1-10).
-- Tom Meek