Parents' Guide to

Patti Cake$

By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

White female rapper chases success; language, sex, drinking.

Movie R 2017 109 minutes
Patti Cake$ 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?

PATTI CAKE$ (Danielle Macdonald) tends bar and, when there are openings, she works as a server for a bar mitzvah caterer. When she isn't scrimping for money to support her disabled Nana (Cathy Moriarty) and her unemployed, drunken mother Barb (Bridget Everett), she's spitting bars with her bestie, Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay), another rapper who works at a pharmacy. Together they hustle to get studio time. Like others in their working-class neighborhood, they long to escape and they see their passion for rap as the way out. The local rapper wannabes view Patti, the heavyset white woman, and Jheri, her enthusiastic Indian cohort, as jokes. Even her mother, a failed rock singer drinking her way through a life of regret and coulda-beens, laughs at her dream. Only her grandmother offers encouragement, as does her new friend, Basterd the Antichrist (Mamoudou Athie), a loner musician who barely talks and lives in an abandoned shed near a cemetery, where he makes music and contemplates anarchy. Jheri, Patti, and Basterd record their collaborations and eventually perform to acclaim at a competition. They don't win, but the reception urges them to keep plugging away.

Is It Any Good?

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

This film works as a root-for-the-underdog saga, giving us an involving view of an unrelentingly grim upbringing and the despair that follows. Patti has money troubles, a minimal education, and a dead-end future, obstacles that would smother less powerful personalities. In one ironic scene, a wealthy black producer natters on about art and then sneers at Patti's whiteness-rooted inauthenticity as a rapper, calling her a "culture vulture" who has appropriated an allegedly black-only art. Her poverty and grit underscores the absurdity of his assessment.

The talented cast of Patti Cake$ turns a fairly routine story into something special. Macdonald's power as both an actor and a performer is even more astonishing in light of the fact that she's Australian, someone for whom speaking with a Jersey accent and rapping are both foreign. The rap may not inspire shouts of "bravo" from the audience, but it's fun to hear Neosporin rhymed with Wheel of Fortune. Director-writer Geremy Jasper gives us a place where crude language is constant, as if what we think of as "dirty" language is the only thing foul and ugly enough to express the anger, pain, and frustration of people who know they've been left behind by the more privileged, better-educated elite. Barb thinks Nana may have "Oldzheimer's," and that is just the most minor indication of how ignorance has narrowed the boundaries and possibilities of all these difficult lives.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about what it means to follow your dreams. What do you think happens to Patti after the movie ends? Do you see future success? Why or why not?

  • Patti Cake$ suggests that it's important to work with good collaborators. How do you think working with Jheri and Basterd influenced Patti's work?

  • How important is it for young people to receive support from parents and close friends? How damaging can it be when parents denigrate goals and aspirations? What are some examples of each in the movie?

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