Hangin' with the Homeboys

The film's cliches - of both character and style - mask (some might say undermine) what is a surprisingly complex look at race, sex, and masculinity. The four leads are all caricatures to some extent, but their comic personas give way to fully-realized characters with relatable flaws and ambitions. What could have been a perfunctory, if entertaining, boys-night-out comedy becomes something much more interesting than that. Plus, I unabashedly dig that early-90s urban style the film has in spades.

Well-written and performed evocation of the fears and insecurities of young ethnic males circa 1991 seems to want to play everything a little too safe by dressing itself as a sort of "HANGOVER-lite" type sex comedy; while it works well enough on these terms, it scores better when dealing with surprising honesty with the real problems faced by its leading characters, and when giving Leguizamo a rare chance to really shine (an opportunity he hasn't had before or since).

There is a tendency 2 hammer certain messages & general over-familiarity that comes w/ road-trip movies (status quos will be challenged), but the ending is nowhere as neat as 1 might expect. What really makes this stand out however r its details. Not only does the film bask in NYC locations that have been MIA from screens since the 1970's, it offers up 1 of the most distinctively lived-in & well-rounded takes on the various ups and downs of underprivileged minority males in H'wood studio history