CB4

CB4 succeeds on joke overkill, made possible by a story framework that begs for heavy-handed puns and sophomoric sight gags. It is a cotton-candy comedy, far wispier than its prototype, but equally insightful into the rap world as This Is Spinal Tap was to rock. [12 Mar 1993, p.30]

The movie is part rap Spinal Tap, part Loaded Weapon I, part Mad magazine. And, like those forms of parodic tribute, it assumes a very specific knowledge of the performers, the music and videos being parodied, a certain level of hipness. In other words, if you don't know rap, forget about it. You'd do just as well taking an SAT prepared by extraterrestrials. If you know the turf, though, you're in for some fun. Read full review

As with any band movie, this is a moral, rise-and-fall tale. Rock must learn he's a regular guy, not a nasty poseur. Like Spinal Tap, the movie basically peters out, tying up its narrative loose ends. But for the laughs you get, it's a small price to pay. Read full review

CB4 is not in the Spinal Tap league, lacking that film's merciless detail and consistency. But in parts it is hugely, monstrously funny. Read full review

More clever in idea than execution, this mockumentary about a trio of middle-class poseurs masquerading as the World's Most Dangerous Group Not Named N.W.A (Rock even sports Eazy-E's trademark jheri curl) is at its best when it's spoofing the songs of the time — Sweat of My Balls, a hilarious reworking of Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo's Talk Like Sex is Weird Al–level genius. Read full review

CB4 has a good time parodying the rap world, and the mock songs and fake videos featured here are funny and dead-on. But more and more as it goes along CB4 gets bogged down in details. The inspiration goes out of the picture, and the last half hour is just a matter of going through the motions. [12 Mar 1993, p.C1]

The movie has some outstanding moments. Rock's performance and writing show that he appreciates rap music and its place in the culture, but he is not so respectful that he is incapable of skewering it. The movie's failings show up in the last half hour. Tamra Davis, known for directing many top music videos, lapses into predictability. The edge in the first part of the film goes dull by picture's end. And the story, written by Rock, Nelson George and Robert LoCash, becomes needlessly complicated, then meanders to a conclusion. [17 Mar 1993, p.3F]

Not all Saturday Night Live sketches succeed in the transition from small screen 5 minute slot to hour and a half, with CB4 a fine example of one with mixed results. Rock and his group do well in mocking not only the blacks, but whites and all number of classes along the way, except the story doesn't quite manage to hold it's own as the joke begins to tire after the first hour. Read full review

Torn between celebration and sendup, CB4 misses its big target as often as it hits. Still, it's hard not to chuckle when Rock, in a slow-motion lovers-running-in-the-field montage, trips and falls under an excess of gold chains, or when he experiences a nightmare vision of his future in the Hip Hop Retirement Home. Read full review

There are good laughs to be gleaned from CB4's scattershot, loosely structured scenario, which was co-written by Robert LoCash and producer-culture critic Nelson George. The upside of this sloppy storytelling is that it allows director Tamra Davis to insert some dead-on parodies of music videos. [13 Mar 1993, p.8D]

The movie has bounce and bite, but it skitters around too much. Its needle is hip-hopping around between too many grooves. Read full review

Made in the shadow of Wayne's World, CB4 is another Saturday Night Live-related music parody, this time skewering rap instead of heavy metal. Desperately uneven, it works best as a string of sketches about the title band, three guys who were born Albert (Chris Rock), Otis (Deezer D) and Euripides (Allen Payne) until they realized it might be more profitable to rename themselves MC Gusto, Stab Master Arson and Dead Mike. Read full review

Tamra Davis, a music video director with the well-received feature debut Guncrazy on her resume, might have really had something here had she settled on any one of the many paths the movie starts down. Read full review

The movie runs short of material and loses its comic edge about halfway through, but it's still just jumpy enough to keep you interested -- though the rap-video parodies are almost indistinguishable from the real thing. [15 Mar 1993, p.C6]

CB4 would like to be a savage hip-hop lampoon, but, in fact, the film strikes a cautious balance between satire and homage. It can’t decide whether it wants to ridicule CB4 or hold the group up as role models. What we’re left with is a soggy catalog of rap cliches. Read full review

A confused, unfunny film with a few guns and some decent tunes. As CB4 (the CB stands for Cell Block), Saturday Night Live's Chris Rock and company are the hottest rap group in the world, an NWA gangsta rap rip-off oozing the prerequisite amounts of street tough sass, misogyny, and devil-may-care, screw-the-police attitude. Read full review

CB4 is a profoundly confused movie, combining rap music with a satire of the world of rap. Working both sides of the street, it gets caught in traffic. The film stars Chris Rock and Phil Hartman from Saturday Night Live, but it doesn't have SNL's smarts -- and worse, it doesn't have any sense of what's funny. On a structural level, it's incompetently written and directed. Read full review

With only momentary grandmaster flashes of brainless fun, too much of CB4 belongs in the hip-hopper. [12 Mar 1993, p.8D]

The title CB4 stands for Cell Block 4, but it may as well mean crash and burn, because that's what happens to this sputtering satire of modern rap music and Black hip-hop culture. Read full review

By any sensible standard, and from any ethnic perspective, this is juvenile trash of the lowest order. Never rising above its own crotch-obsessed level of would-be satire, it fails to examine the social issues that give rap music its aggressive vitality, and completely misses every opportunity for intelligent comedy that lies neglected beneath the surface of its imbecilic, gutter-minded excuse for a plot. [12 Mar 1993, p.3]