Comedienne Bridget Everett shows off her vocal chops as well as her meaty cleavage as the flawed mom who had her own dreams of musical success in an ‘80s hair band.
#BRIDGET EVERETT SHOWS OFF HER SOFTER MOVIE#
The whole plot has about as much mystery as a performance on a pole, but it’s the brief encounters with believable disaster that give the movie its winning character.įor that matter, even the shallow characters who feel like screenwriter cut-outs bristle with real dimension. They’re deep enough to bounce off the shallow obstacles of the surrounding characters without losing their inherent humanity. Sure, it’s hokey and pat, but Patti and Jheri are fantastic characters. The whole plot has about as much mystery as a performance on a pole, but it’s the brief encounters with believable disaster that give the movie its winning character. Jheri believes in Patti and encourages her to put her dreams into some practical context, which to him, means holding a CD release party at the local peeler bar. Jheri is the character who makes Patti lovable because in essence, he is her innocence and her conscience rolled into one relatable sidekick. Enabling this alternate reality is her only real friend, Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay), a pharmacist with a desire to wear doo-rags whenever possible. Patti’s only solace is writing lyrics in her notebooks and indulging in her rap star fantasy as Killa P - a woman with all the words and a never-say-die attitude. Just as we buy into the music video feel, Jasper unveils the forgery and shows us how Patti really lives: in a small Jersey home that’s constantly under threat of foreclosure, thanks to her hard-drinking mom and her bad taste in men. It’s Patti - looking like Adele and sounding like Nicky Minaj - standing alongside her hero, a rap star named O-Z (Sahr Ngaujah). Hollywood’s version of success may well be little more than smoke, mirrors and low camera angles.įittingly, that’s exactly how Patti Cake$ opens: In a fog of emerald green, as a young woman finds the spotlight before a crowd of adoring fans. We also love the hint of disaster waiting in the wings, reminding us that life is not a movie and fame is often assigned at random. We love watching someone transform his or her life through sheer will power. In Hollywood, it’s a recurring one that dates back to Tinseltown’s infancy, so Jasper can be forgiven for the fact Patti Cake$ feels like Rocky and 8 Mile meets Precious. She needs to make the haters swallow their slags, and in order to do that, she needs to serve up her sweet rhymes on a silver platter.
#BRIDGET EVERETT SHOWS OFF HER SOFTER PLUS#
Dirt poor and burdened by her self-destructive mother (Bridget Everett), Patti works at the local dive slinging beer so she can care for her ailing Nana (Cathy Moriarty), but what she really wants is the glitz and glamour of the big time: A mansion in Malibu, photo shoots and free clothes, plus the undying affection of a mass following. Patti has one kind of cake, but she’s desperately lacking in another.
A coming of age indie that roared out of the gate at Sundance, Patti Cake$ is the story of Patricia (Danielle Macdonald), a big gal from New Jersey with big dreams of becoming the next rap sensation.
It’s helpful to know such things if you plan on quoting Marie Antoinette to a teenager any time soon, but it’s particularly useful with regards to Geremy Jasper’s new movie Patti Cake$. According to the slang dictionary, not to mention DJ Khaled, Flo Rida and 50 Cent, “cake” can mean two things in a rap lyric: “a nice, big ass” or “money.”