I Got the Hook Up Reviews

Scrappy, boisterous and unrepentantly rude, this caper comedy written by and starring rapper Master P (his first film, I'm Bout It, went straight to video and was distributed through his label, No Limit) is sporadically funny but hampered by its amateurish execution. Black and Blue (Master P and A.J. Johnson) run a neighborhood flea market and scam their way from one dollar to the next. All that changes when a gullible truck driver (Joe Estevez) is persuaded to let them take delivery of several boxes of cell phones meant for a Mr. Goldstein. With the help of super-freaky Lorraine (Gretchen Palmer), whose job with the fraud division of the Cellular Two company lets the off-the-book entrepreneurs hook their phones up, Black and Blue quickly have the whole neighborhood reaching out and touching someone. But their scheme gets them in trouble with Lorraine's boss (Frantz Turner) and, more importantly, local hood Mr. Roscoe, who sends hit man T-Lay (Tiny Lister) to cut off their service permanently. The film's sense of humor runs to vulgar jokes and broad stereotypes, and the overwhelming majority of its characters are, in the words of sassy loan shark Lola Mae (rapper Mia X), "victims of a cussing family." John Witherspoon delivers a funny turn as a fussy TV repair shop owner whose store fronts for an unbelievably tacky brothel, and motormouthed comic A.J. Johnson gets off some snappy lines. But the pacing is slow and the laugh-out-loud moments are way too few and far between.