Did you ever just say to yourself, “I’m going to make a movie?” Many of us have. Brian Hooks did, too, and then made one. In what was clearly an audition tape for Saturday Night Live, Brian Hooks stars himself as a man who avoids Vegas crimelords by spinning a story of stunning irrelevance and limited humor. The story is replete with visions of sketch comedy just good enough to make me change the channel.
Aspiring star comedian “Brian Hooks” (Brian Hooks) is kidnapped after a successful night in Vegas. The thugs want a share of the winnings. Brian claims he cannot tell them the location without jogging his memory, which involves recalling in fine detail the events of the past 24 hours. And it just so happened that he had a bad pitch meeting for a self-made comedy show just yesterday. Lucky us, we get to see his pitch, which includes several underimagined attempts at humor and four major sketches — “Bumpy Rollins,” a 
sketch about a humorless and jolly-until-provoked ghetto cooking show host,” the Tooters,” a sketch about a royal who farts constantly, “To Catch a Fatophile,” a parody of entrapment television where the subjects are hot for immensely obese women and, lastly, sketch that
actually made me chuckle a bit about a live investigative report of a man who thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him. In that sketch, the camera crew repeatedly films the woman in a parking lot do somebody new every night, then asks the subject, “do you recognize the man in the car?” “Yes. It’s my — best friend, –brother, –father.” There’s a good punchline at the end of that run. I hate to spoil the movie’s only good joke.
We’ve seen movies like this before. The best remains Hollywood Shuffle. Brian Hooks is no Robert Townsend. As you may note, the sketches I described weren’t terribly funny (what is the freaking fascination with fart jokes? Have we not heard them already? Are we not done? Do they actually have anything to say about anything?) and one was just plain offensive — The Fatophile sketch even pointed out there is actually nothing illegal about finding obese people attractive. Nothing whatsoever … ah, but it’s embarrassing! Is it? We’re gonna go there, are we? Tell me, is it embarrassing for a man to love enormous round behinds? You gonna sell that comedy to a black audience? (Hooks is black as is the majority of the cast.) There just isn’t much here to enjoy.
I love that Brian Hooks got to see a dream come to life (this is his second film, but still); I love that he was able to create and star in a film that got national distribution; I love that behind this endeavor, there’s a feel for a small guy getting to be a big man in a limited way; I love that he’ll be able to tell his children, his children’s children and so on that he made a movie and, btw, here’s the DVD. That being said, Laughing to the Bank kinda sucked.
I don’t mind that Laughing looks and feels small budget. I’d mind it in other films, but you get the idea that Brian is in way over his head, budget-wise. And I know he’s over his head comedy-wise.
The mob has Brian in fear
Of all that he holds dear
It’s sketches, you see?
This SNL wannabe
Reminds me of the “Madonna” year
Not Rated, 89 Minutes
D: Brian Hooks
W: Roy Hooks (the writer and director have the same last name?! What were the odds?)
Genre: Check it out, we shot a movie!
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The Family Hooks
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Michael Bay
