The movie centered on a woman, Marci Feld (Lisa Kudrow), whose father owns a large corporation. Its holdings include a music label that produces some of the hate rap that has become popular over recent years, including heavily sexual and violent overtones. A Senator has called for a boycott of the corporation, threatening to bankrupt it and end all the good work the family has done over the years. Director Richard Benjamin played the father and looked really embarrassed over how White he came off here. Anyway, Marci goes to confront the rapper, Dr. S. (Damon Wayans), who promptly (and correctly) dismisses her as being unworthy of his time. In what amounted to a terrible "rap off", she proved why she should stick to television shows or at least stay away from singing anywhere outside of her shower.

So the rest of the movie bounces back and forth between the good doctor portraying a hardcore rapper torn between commercial interests and "keeping it real" as Marci tries to get him to come around. That the two become love interests was among the most forced parts of this lame movie. The movie took some of the various controversies surrounding rap over the years and tried, in vain I might add, to melt them into a coherent comedy but the satire was missing and the stereotypes about as objectionable as could be. Is it any wonder that the movie studio sat on this one for three years and only recently released it?

So the themes of censorship, artistic integrity, racial disharmony, and the like were available to the writer (amusingly enough, a movie critic himself), yet he dumbed down all the possibilities to make Marci X. By beating the message into the head of the viewer in such a clumsy manner, he tossed aside most of the humor and even social commentary that so many others did so much better before him. Given a comic talent like Wayans and likeable personality like Kudrow, he fought against all odds to make what amounted to a horribly flawed movie devoid of any redeeming value. The issues exist to make a good satire, a good comedy, and even a good drama but none of those exists inside this movie, which is why I think it's not even worth a rating of Skip It but that's the lowest I can go under this rating system.

Picture: The picture was presented in with a choice of anamorphic widescreen color in the original 1.85:1 ratio it was filmed in or a full frame 1.33:1 ratio for those that hate the infamous "black bars" that real movies employ. There was some grain and minor pattern noise at times but generally the picture looked good. There wasn't a lot of sharp detail but the fleshtones were accurate and no compression artifacts were noticed.

Sound: The audio was presented with a choice of a 5.1 Dolby Digital surround English track or a corresponding 2.0 Dolby Digital track for those unequipped to handle the better track. The vocals were a bit hollow at times and the music lacked the clarity you'd expect from a movie based on musical themes. In all, it wasn't bad, just not as good as you'd expect.

Extras: There were some trailers but that's it.

Final Thoughts: If I could rate this one as Burn It, I would, but suffice it to say that the limitations of the subject matter were so bad as to overcome the talented cast. There were no redeeming extras and for a comedy to suffer the fate of being unfunny, there's no hope. Pass this one up for a good movie like Fear Of A Black Hat if you want to see the subject matter handled in a far superior manner.