COFFEE AND KAREEM
US, 2020, 88 minutes, Colour.
Ed Helms, Taraji P.Henson, Terence Little Gardenhigh, Betty Gilpin, Ron Reaco Lee, David Alan Grier.
Directed by Michael Dowse.
This Netflix comedy was released in the early months of the coronavirus lockdown and was very popular.
Basically, it is the story of a less than common-sensed police officer, Coffee, Ed Helms, who is the target of criticism by his superiors. The opening of the film shows him ruining a police set up. He is in love with Vanessa, Taraji P.Henson, who has a quite incorrigible son, played by Terence Little Gardenhigh. He is called Kareem – eventually the cream in the policeman’s coffee! He is a strong screen presence, very large in build, with dreadlocks and quite a mouth!
Kareem resents his mother’s relationship with Coffee and goes to visit some thugs, drug dealers to get rid of Coffee. The thugs are interrogating a policeman about deals and money – and one of them carelessly shoots him. Kareem has been taping everything.
This begins a frantic chase, Kareem wanting to avoid Coffee, yet Coffee trying to bond with the boy. The action is a kind of madcap violent chase, eventually Vanessa being abducted. While Coffee and Kareem clash, they are thrown together in a whole lot of situations and begin to bond, not without some difficulties.
It is then revealed that the police superior (Betty Gilpin) and her boss (David Alan Grier) are both corrupt and in on the drug dealing. However, one of the gang is a would-be dentist and would-be singing artist who is persuaded to be on the side of Coffee and Kareem.
Needless to say, after a huge shootout between the corrupt police and the Canadian drug dealers, there is a happy ending.
One of the difficulties for some audiences will be the incessant coarse language, especially coming from Kareem. He is also ultra-precocious and there is some shock realisation of this in his frank and crude talk about sex and sexual relationships and sexual behaviour. Which means then that a lot of the film is very vulgar, to say the least, and a lot of the comedy is crude and crass. But, this is a reminder, of popular standards by 2020, especially from the United States where there was a kind of prudish attitude towards sexuality and swearing in free to air television.
