Next Day Air is a Benny Boom film with boom in terms of gunfire and ‘boom’ in the Afrikaans sense of the word. Boom’s MTV video direction must have raised some eyebrows, because the man’s made a name for himself at MTV and now at the movies. His feature film debut is an uneasy mix of Quentin Tarantino and a Spike Lee joint and stars Donald Faison, Mike Epps, Cisco Reyes and Mos Def.

Now dropping Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee’s names into the melting pot may get your attention, but Next Day Air falls short when contrasted with the comic velocity of a Tarantino flick or the intellectual depth of a Spike Lee movie. If Boom was aiming for these Hollywood greats, he missed the mark and landed somewhere amongst a Madonna-era Guy Ritchie and a Don’t-Be-A-Menace-to-South-Central-While-Drinking-Your-Juice-in-the-Hood Wayans brothers.

We’ve seen this sort of movie one hundred times: suitcase of cash/illegal goods gets the old switcheroo or lands in the hands of innocent bystanders… except this time it’s a delivery package and the bystanders are a bunch of gang bangers. Ritchie thrives in this territory where crossed signals, underground scum of the earth and gun-slinging hoodlums come standard. Boom creates a similar environment, although some would say South Central already fits the mold. Next Day Air’s diverse Afro-American and Mexican urban drug war formula has potential, but the script diverts racial tension in favour of excessive violence.

Next Day Air is primed as a crime action stoner comedy, except the comedy is half-baked and not as strong as Harold & Kumar, Pineapple Express or even Half-Baked?! The comedy is light… so light that you sometimes forget you’re watching a comedy with all the “pop-a-cap-in-his-ass” drama unfolding. The cast includes a number of underrated actors and they deserve more than this f-bomb of a script. Donald Faison of Scrubs notoriety doesn’t have much opportunity to shine without a wing man, and Mos Def (remember The Italian Job) seems too stoned or subtle to make the most of his role. The writers should have given Leo (Faison) and Eric (Def) more buddy-buddy screen time as the counterbalance to the unforgiving and idiotic coke-dealing gangsters. Without this equalizer, Next Day Air sways over into the crime drama zone and makes it difficult for the audience to know if they should be rolling or leopard-crawling in the aisles. Mike Epps is competent as Brody alongside paranoid partner-in-crime and sidekick, Guch, played by Wood Harris. These fumbling bank robbers could have made a worthy substitute for the failed Leo/Eric comic pairing, but also didn’t get enough time or decent material.

While the dialogue and interactions make the characters intriguing and even complex, the movie seems to skate along at a superficial level. The double serving of guns, expletives, drugs and attitude tries to give Next Day Air an air of cool… by “keepin’ it real”. However, it all just seems a tad formulaic like red heart-shaped chocolate boxes on Valentine’s Day. Benny Boom’s debut film holds some merit in its range of characters, situational comedy and story-telling, but it runs dry on inspiration and lacks the drive of other better ensemble movies in its genre. Without a strong lead or any decent stoner comedy material, the movie resorts to violence and powers home with a shoot out that would make Hamlet stutter and Martin Scorsese blush. You’ll probably see the light at the end of the tunnel with Next Day Air, although it’s not going to hit you like those overnight freight trains from Ritchie, Lee or Tarantino.

The bottom line: Half-baked.

Release date: 3 July, 2009

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