Comments

1. the joy princess wrote:

   Warning: SPOILERS!

   Haven’t seen it but various sites and papers said:

   Mo’Nique plays Lateesha, a character whose function is as incomprehensible as anything else in this movie. Her key scene has her as a guest on the “Jerry Springer Show” as the youngest mixed-race grandmother in America.

   “Domino” is almost stolen by Mo’Nique’s Lateesha, the hefty mamma whose urgent need for $300,000 causes all the trouble. The film’s funniest scene is her (totally gratuitous) appearance on “The Jerry Springer Show,” advocating her new nomenclature for people of mixed races (Blacktino, Chinegro …).

   My reaction to Domino is about as mixed as the mixed race flowchart that Mo’Nique presents on The Jerry Springer Show during the movie (I know, that doesn’t make much sense unless you’ve seen the movie). I dare you to not laugh once she starts introducing terms such as Blacktino, Chinegro, and Japanic. I suppose if you suck at the teat of political correctness then you might not get the joke, but otherwise it’s one of the funnier scenes in the movie (the running 90210 joke being the funniest). At this point you’re probably wondering what in the world Mo’Nique, Jerry Springer, mixed flow charts, and 90210 have to do with a movie about bounty hunters. It’s a legit question. All I can say is welcome to the unconventionalism that is Domino.

   Posted 06 Nov 2005 at 10:22 pm ¶

2. Bryce wrote:

   It’s a comedy scene in which Mo’Nique’s character appears on Jerry Springer as the worlds youngest grandmother (28), but instead uses the opportunity to espouse her thoughts on how mixed-race people are classified. The butt of the joke was that as a half Latino/half African-American she should be called a “Black-tino” (or something like that). This caused a commotion in the audience, and I believe an audience member chimed in saying she was half Black/half Chinese…so Mo’Nique said she was a “Cha-Negro” (or something like that), which caused an even bigger Springer-style ruckus. The scene culminated, as you mentioned, with Mo’Nique presenting a chart with a mapping of the different ethnic groups and the appropriate hybrid names that should be used for all the different combinations of mixed-ethnicity…

   Posted 06 Nov 2005 at 11:42 pm ¶

3. Ida wrote:

   First of all, the film really isn’t that bad. I don’t think that it’s really that good either. I’d chalk it up as slightly better than average, big budget entertainment, which is more interesting when picked apart than when put together as a film package.

   The movie does address, without political correctness, the issue of mixed race families. Mo’Nique’s role in the film is that of a young, struggling mixed race grandmother who wants to find a (desperate but scheming) way to raise the sum of $300,000, the high price of a special health care treatment for her granddaughter. There is sort of nice line of familial bonding, interracial relationship, and good will in that piece of the story, but it’s not really what the above news comment is referring to.

   During the course of the show, Mo’Nique gets pulled onto the Jerry Springer Show and uses it as a forum to launch her proposed solution to the lack of vocabulary for mixed race issues. It is definitely not politically correct, but the difficulty with (and audience backlash to) an attempt to create such a vocabulary is the basis for the comedic element of the scene (poking fun at a painful and difficult topic) but makes an interesting feature to the scene. I think it’s provocative, whether or not you like the scene or the movie.

   Although the surface level of the movie is pretty shallow, underneath the slick bounty hunter glam story it does touch on issues related to family, class struggle, interracial relationships, and the overwhelming cost of health care. It’s not enough to make the movie deep or overwhelmingly interesting, but it is enough to provide some points for later thought and discussion.

   Posted 07 Nov 2005 at 7:54 pm ¶

4. Orca Winfrey wrote:

   This flick is just rife with cookie-cutter racial stereotypes…

   All the sistahs are ridiculously ghetto-sassy - and must be saved by the white heroine in the end.
   The petulant Latin lover.
   Asian gangsters get owned by above in a ridiculous scene where he sticks his finger down a shotgun barrel pointed at him.
   See Jerry Springer segment described above.

   Grr - I want my money back.

   Posted 14 Nov 2005 at 12:59 pm ¶

5. Dark wrote:

   I liked the story. It was Alf, not Domino that saves everyone, she is just the only one who lives.

   Posted 22 Feb 2006 at 6:43 pm ¶

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