Critic Reviews

CB4 succeeds on joke overkill, made possible by a story framework that begs for heavy-handed puns and sophomoric sight gags. It is a cotton-candy comedy, far wispier than its prototype, but equally insightful into the rap world as This Is Spinal Tap was to rock. [12 Mar 1993, p.30]

The movie is part rap Spinal Tap, part Loaded Weapon I, part Mad magazine. And, like those forms of parodic tribute, it assumes a very specific knowledge of the performers, the music and videos being parodied, a certain level of hipness. In other words, if you don't know rap, forget about it. You'd do just as well taking an SAT prepared by extraterrestrials. If you know the turf, though, you're in for some fun.

As with any band movie, this is a moral, rise-and-fall tale. Rock must learn he's a regular guy, not a nasty poseur. Like Spinal Tap, the movie basically peters out, tying up its narrative loose ends. But for the laughs you get, it's a small price to pay.

CB4 is not in the Spinal Tap league, lacking that film's merciless detail and consistency. But in parts it is hugely, monstrously funny.

More clever in idea than execution, this mockumentary about a trio of middle-class poseurs masquerading as the World's Most Dangerous Group Not Named N.W.A (Rock even sports Eazy-E's trademark jheri curl) is at its best when it's spoofing the songs of the time — Sweat of My Balls, a hilarious reworking of Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo's Talk Like Sex is Weird Al–level genius.

CB4 has a good time parodying the rap world, and the mock songs and fake videos featured here are funny and dead-on. But more and more as it goes along CB4 gets bogged down in details. The inspiration goes out of the picture, and the last half hour is just a matter of going through the motions. [12 Mar 1993, p.C1]

The movie has some outstanding moments. Rock's performance and writing show that he appreciates rap music and its place in the culture, but he is not so respectful that he is incapable of skewering it. The movie's failings show up in the last half hour. Tamra Davis, known for directing many top music videos, lapses into predictability. The edge in the first part of the film goes dull by picture's end. And the story, written by Rock, Nelson George and Robert LoCash, becomes needlessly complicated, then meanders to a conclusion. [17 Mar 1993, p.3F]

Not all Saturday Night Live sketches succeed in the transition from small screen 5 minute slot to hour and a half, with CB4 a fine example of one with mixed results. Rock and his group do well in mocking not only the blacks, but whites and all number of classes along the way, except the story doesn't quite manage to hold it's own as the joke begins to tire after the first hour.

Torn between celebration and sendup, CB4 misses its big target as often as it hits. Still, it's hard not to chuckle when Rock, in a slow-motion lovers-running-in-the-field montage, trips and falls under an excess of gold chains, or when he experiences a nightmare vision of his future in the Hip Hop Retirement Home.

There are good laughs to be gleaned from CB4's scattershot, loosely structured scenario, which was co-written by Robert LoCash and producer-culture critic Nelson George. The upside of this sloppy storytelling is that it allows director Tamra Davis to insert some dead-on parodies of music videos. [13 Mar 1993, p.8D]