1994 Washington Post Article, by Desson Howe
The language in Martin Lawrence's "You So Crazy" will be considered offensive by most mainstream audiences. Unleashing every taboo subject imaginable -- sex, masturbation, homosexuality, racism, marijuana and crack-smoking -- Lawrence romps around the stage like the Pied Piper of Profanity.
But while the 28-year-old comedian leads the audience through a shock corridor full of four-letter words, there's method to his badness. Lawrence wants to make his generation laugh -- and will do or say just about anything to achieve that. But, with acidic social commentary and anecdotes of surprising sensitivity, he's also nudging anyone who'll listen toward his version of sanity.
"Racism bothers me, it ****s with me," he says at the beginning of this concert, recorded at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Majestic Theatre last year. "You brought us to this m**r," he tells white people in general. "We was in Africa chillin."
Martin Lawrence, who got his start in Landover, Maryland, and had a string of supporting roles in movies, including "Do the Right Thing" and "House Party," stars in the Television sitcom series "Martin" and hosts the weekly HBO "Def Comedy Jam" series, is more than mere sensation.
Here, in an eerily sardonic imitation of a stoned woman trying futilely to maintain her dignity, he inveighs against taking crack. He also weighs in satirically on Rodney King, the L.A. riots and white film goers silently uncomfortable with blacks who talk their way through movies.
In sexual matters (the greater part of his attention), Lawrence revels boyishly in talking about male and female genitalia. But his crudeness always reveals an issue -- of loneliness, sadness, frustration ...whatever. There's an intriguing vein of quasi-feminism in there too. His act, a seamless, high-energy mixture of monologues and in-character shticks, contains an extraordinarily large number of fictional women who -- in relationship clashes -- come out ahead or vindicated.
He reveres his mother ("My Moms"), a poverty-struck woman who raised him and five other fatherless children. And he presses his male audience to pursue rewarding relationships with women ("Your girl better be your best friend"), use condoms and take care of the kids they do make.
Lawrence is constantly on the move, his body a dynamic, hilarious instrument. When he talks about being a poor kid, he convincingly transforms himself into a 7-year-old, tearing around the yard in crazy circles, head turned sideways to express naivete and corner-turning glee. Playing a woman trying to preserve her hairdo as she sleeps, Lawrence's head jerks back elegantly every time it comes close to contact with an imaginary pillow.
"You So Crazy" originally received an NC-17 rating, causing Miramax Pictures (now part of Walt Disney) to hastily dump it. But the Samuel Goldwyn Co. picked up the movie and distributed it without a rating. For viewers familiar with, or open to, Lawrence's verbal and cultural assaults, the picture's new lease on life is great news. Lawrence is as provocatively and insightfully funny as ever.
Comedian Richard Pryor, one of Lawrence's heroes, still remains the best raconteur of black pain and reality. But Lawrence often comes close to Pryor's adults-only poetry. You So Crazy, directed unobtrusively by Thomas Schlamme, shows a comic talent sometimes at its worst but more frequently at its best. What's most appealing is the humanity under the bravado. If he keeps that up, Lawrence has even better things ahead. You So Crazy contains constant profanity. |
