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Parents' Guide to

B.A.P.S.

By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 13+

Dated '90s comedy has stereotypes, language.

Movie PG-13 1997 91 minutes
B.A.P.S. Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

In B.A.P.S. Nisi (Halle Berry) is a wannabe hairdresser working as a waitress in a luncheonette in Decatur, GA. She dreams of having the funds to open a hair salon/restaurant with her best friend Mickey (Natalie Desselle), who is a great cook. In the hopes of making a quick buck, they pool their savings to fly to Los Angeles for a long-shot music video audition, despite the fact that Nisi is neither a dancer nor an actor. Demonstrating their cluelessness about everything, they run up to celebrities and start squealing, throwing their arms around the strangers and demanding their attention in a manner that could justifiably be termed assault. (There are cameos by LL Cool J and Dennis Rodman, among others.) The women dress in garish colors, in vinyl and animal patterns, with hair several feet high, gold teeth, and polished nails four inches long. Nisi blows the audition, but a handsome young scammer has a $10,000 job offer for the unsuspecting duo and, asking no questions, they say yes. Isaac (Jonathan Fried) is the greedy nephew of Don Blakemore (Martin Landau), a wealthy older man who looks quite healthy but only has weeks to live. Nisi is to pretend she's the granddaughter of the love of Don's life, Lily, the Black family housekeeper of his youth. Don accepts this absurd proposition, invites the ladies to live in his mansion, and Beverly Hills shopping sprees, club-hopping, soul food dinners, and bonding with a seemingly disapproving butler named Manly (Ian Richardson) ensue.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

Halle Berry gives this her all, but the script doesn't do the talented actor justice. B.A.P.S. offers two crude, loud, ill-mannered, ignorant women who haven't a clue about how the world works and no curiosity to find out. Yes, the women prove to have hearts of gold, but their decency doesn't really make 90 minutes of ridicule any less cringe-inducing. Fran Drescher played clueless and crass in The Beautician and the Beast and Reese Witherspoon did clueless and spoiled in Legally Blonde, so the cliché produces varying degrees of success. But this misses the mark most of the time. When the women mistake a bidet for a second toilet, it takes Nisi a second to mistakenly turn the water on herself, but it takes 34 seconds of incompetence to turn the geyser off. It's okay to be ignorant about bidets, but it isn't okay to be too stupid to turn off a faucet.

Ian Richardson plays the meticulous and well-mannered butler, stereotypically deployed as the foil to the women's garish crudeness. His gradual appreciation of their decency signals to the audience that even snooty White people are capable of recognizing the good character of the heroines. And for a guy expected to die in two weeks, Landau plays Don as spry and energetic, which makes no sense. Nisi seems to hate her "boyfriend" Ali (Pierre Edwards), deriding him mercilessly for being an unambitious dope who wants to start a limo company but hasn't bothered to get a drivers' license. She has no qualms about leaving him and the movie offers no connection between them of any kind. Suddenly she baselessly describes him as the love of her life and, given our view of him, when they reconnect at the story's end, it's hard to see that as a happy ending.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about what makes us laugh. Were the characters and situations here funny? Why or why not?

  • Why do some movies with characters who don't understand what's going on seem funny, while others with similarly limited characters seem offensive? Which category did you think this movie falls into?

  • Do you think this movie portrays offensive racial stereotypes? If yes, what are some examples?

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