Patti Cake$ (2017)

Film: Patti Cake$ (2017)
Stars: Danielle Macdonald, Bridget Everett, Siddharth Dhananjay, Mamoudou Athie, Cathy Moriarty
Director: Geremy Jasper
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Films about musicians are perhaps the most tired genre currently at the movies.  Typically, admittedly, they're based on real-life figures, everyone from Johnny Cash to James Brown to Ray Charles to NWA, and they all follow the same pattern of "come from nothing, become massive success with soundtrack-ready hits, and then fall hard before redemption."  It's quite frankly extremely boring at this point, and usually the only redeemable factors of the movies are in the performances or the tweaks they have on the format.  Patti Cake$ tries to be something new, mostly in choosing a virtual unknown as the main character, but suffers from being been-there-done-that, even if it might well have landed us a future star in Danielle Macdonald.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on Patti (Macdonald), a young woman living in Bergen County, New Jersey with her alcoholic mother barb (Everett) and her chain-smoking grandmother, known only in the film as Nana (Moriarty, barely recognizable except for that voice which is impossible not to place).  Patti has dreams of becoming a major rap star, signed to a label in Manhattan (she and her friend Jheri, played by Dhananjay, both spend much of their time rapping and looking at the skyline across the river).  She works two jobs as a bartender, but idolizes a man named Oz, and is legitimately great at rapping, frequently outdoing some of the guys in her neighborhood who perform regularly.

You can see where this is going, right?  Eventually she gets some opportunities, blows them, and then in the film's final moments everyone has a redemptive performance followed by success (in this case Patti's rap group getting their song played by her favorite DJ on the radio).  There's nothing particularly unique here that hasn't been told a million times, and while Patti doesn't seem like a rap superstar (she's plus-sized, white, and female), you can tell pretty instantly that she has the talent to go the distance by the film's end, or at least that's what the writer's intend for you to believe.

Honestly, my biggest problems with the film other than the cliche was that the movie's cruelest moment, where Patti's idol Oz tells her that she's not an artist, isn't entirely wrong.  She worships him, but there's nothing particularly special about her style other than she's fast.  It actually would work in the vapid world of pop music, but the person that Patti is doesn't reflect in those lyrics, oftentimes lying about her confidence, living situation, and bringing out too many celebrity references to count.  It's not bad (like I said, I think it'd be a hit), but even the climactic song where it appears like she's being herself...it feels like it's not jiving with the performances onscreen, and I particularly hated the way that Bridget Everett, who had been pretty good up until that point, is forced to abandon all of the jealous angles that she and Macdonald were bringing to their competitive relationship just so that the writers could have a finale that hit the heartstrings.

Honestly, the performances are what sets this movie apart, particularly those from Macdonald and Everett (Moriarty is a scene-stealing delight, but this is all surface-level antics).  I loved the way that Macdonald is a completely different person around her mother, less confident and dragged down by her mother constantly comparing herself favorably to her daughter, claiming that they're more like "sisters" than a proper maternal relationship.  Particularly compared to Patti's relationship with her best friend Jheri, it's a testament to Macdonald's understanding of her work that we learn so much about Patti from these two relationships.  Had the movie had the guts to go with her, say, leaving her mother or finally telling her mother how toxic their relationship is, the movie would have been stronger rather than that soggy ending.  As it is, what could have been an interesting character study gets bogged down by playing nice.

Those are my thoughts on Patti Cake$, a film that went surprisingly large so I'm hoping some of you have thoughts on it as well.  Share below what you thought, and in particular where you'd like to see Macdonald & Everett head next with their acting careers.