'Baby Boy' examines relationships in inner city

Many people consider "Baby Boy" a companion piece to "Boyz 'N the Hood." John Singleton brought a vivid view of life in the ghetto to the rest of white America with "Hood." The film showed the danger, trouble, and plight of the inner city. \nBut "Baby Boy" just uses the ghetto as a back drop to this growing up, coming of age movie.\nTyrese plays Jody, the title character. Jody has two children with two different women, and can't seem to keep his thing in his pants. \nHe still lives with his mother -- this and his infidelity drive his girlfriend Evette (Taraji P. Henson) crazy.\nIn the past, Jody's brother was thrown out of the house by his mother over her boyfriend, and soon was murdered. Enter Ving Rhames, who becomes Jody's mother's new man. This creates a lot of tension for Jody, who's afraid he'll also be kicked out and killed.\nJody struggles with staying faithful to Evette -- if you were Tyrese, you would have plenty of women flinging themselves at you, too. Finally, Evette's ex-boyfriend, played by rapper Snoop Dogg, is released from prison, setting up camp in her house. Snoop definitely doesn't like Jody, and plots his murder.\n"Baby Boy" doesn't succeed as a companion piece to "Boyz 'N the Hood." "Hood" is an excellent film and would be hard to equal. \nBut "Baby Boy" does succeed in taking an interesting look at love and relationships from the male point of view. "Boy" is also entertaining and funny at moments.\nThe cast is decent, headlined by Ving Rhames. Rhames brings a lot of personality to the film, a quality the movie lacks most. Rhames also provides a few laughs. Besides Rhames and Henson, the rest of the cast is either boring, or overacts their role. Tyrese seems to put in a dull performance, but it fits his part well. Jody isn't a hard-ass player like he wants to be, and in several parts of the movie he seems to realize he's become a loser. Tyrese succeeds at pulling this out of his character. Its kind of like Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights -- he's really not acting well, it's just his acting fits the role perfectly.\n"Boy" is over-dramatic at points, causing some scenes to look cheesy and dumb. Many critics have complained about the editing of the film -- the originally three hour movie was cut down to two for release. Critics felt the plot suffered from the editing of some scenes. But the only problem with the editing was that bad scenes were used. Tyrese and Evette both have bad dreams and visions -- these should have been left out. A drive-by scene is so bad that I laughed as it unfolded.\n"Boy" isn't a waste of $7, but it's definitely not worth more than that.