"Foolish" - - "I don't think P knew what movie we were making."

Foolish is a movie that fails so hard, even the Closed Captioning has some serious issues. Now, I get that whoever did the Closed Captioning for this may not be up on the latest street slang, but at this point who doesn't know the proper way to spell it is "Nigga?" Either A) Racists or B) People who shouldn't be captioning a Master P film.

In the next scene, all the the captions just read "Oooga Booga" and "Where da white wimmin!!!"

The movie itself is a mixture of stand-up comedy from "Foolish Waise" aka Eddie Griffin as himself and a bizarre mafia subplot that is dropped in the middle of the second act. In fact, the last half hour of the movie is a stand up set so the entire plot is dropped at that point.

In between we get: Foolish talking to ghosts, Foolish chasing his girlfriend around with a baseball bat, Foolish talking about getting another girl pregnant six years ago (which is only noteworthy because the actress they chose for the part, but we'll get to that later), and Master P acting how you would expect him to act: badly.

I think Eddie Griffin is funny. I know that Master P sucks. Going into this film, I figured the two would balance each other out for a purely mediocre film. So why did it cross the Rubicon into the land of unwatchable (It took me three days to watch it after falling asleep twice)?

Well, for that we have to go to the director's commentary, where we learn such gems as:

1) Master P personally funded the film, so he had himself put in as a co-star but would only be on set for 15 minutes at a time. His limited availability caused whole chunks of the mafia subplot to be taken out but . . .

2) P put the mafia subplot into the script in the first place. It was originally a semi-biographical story of Eddie Griffin's life until Master P said he would fund the film. Between the two competing narratives there were 15 rewrites of the script (including one where they shoot a man to death in the second scene. What a laugh riot!)

3) P insisted that he have a romantic scene with every female, leaving Eddie with no love interest.

4) P hated shooting outside, where at one point the director had to argue with him to get him to stand outside for an establishing shot. The scene had to be shot in 5 minutes.

5) Foolish's ex, the one he had a relationship with 6 years ago was supposed to be played by Lela Rochon but on the first day she was on set her and Master P got in a "disagreement" (the director tiptoed around what happened, but I assumed he tried to make her say "uhnnnn"). The character is a lawyer who helps them set up their own comedy club. While the director is trying to recast the part, Master P shows up with a girl who looks barely 18 and says "Here's the new actress!" An 18 year old lawyer. Who Foolish got pregnant 6 years ago.

"Clap if you don't know how to make a movie!"

In the original script, it was based on the real life exploits of Eddie Griffin's days in the clubs. But as the title changed from "Tears of a Clown" to "Foolish," the highs and lows of Eddie's story got lost. It was at the point when Master P changed the name of the film that the director lamented "I don't think P knew what movie we were making." It turns out Eddie did, in real life, have huge fights with his girlfriend and in turn smashed up his own car with a baseball bat. Compelling stuff. I'd watch that movie.

But P wanted a scene where they did a home invasion wearing "funny masks." (The director stated this was one scene P insisted having in the film.) There was supposed to be a scene where Master P boxed Mike Tyson . . .why?

Although, watching Master P get punched in the face would have made this movie my favorite film of all time.