TMS Movie Review: They Cloned Tyrone

(Parrish Lewis / Netflix)

Let me start by stating I generally enjoyed Juel Taylor’s They Cloned Tyrone on Netflix this month. I thought it was a clever and amusing blend of blaxploitation homage and sci-fi-comedy. John Boyega was one of the best parts of the Star Wars sequels (2015-19) and sends in a nice lead performance here as the protagonist of Taylor’s film, as do supporting co-stars Teyonah Parris, Kiefer Sutherland and Jamie Foxx. We even get a surprise cameo from Foxx’s former “In Living Color” castmate David Alan Grier. The costumes, art direction and cinematography effectively makes They Cloned Tyrone look and feel like the definition of ‘retro futuristic.’ For the most part, it’s a decent movie for a night at home.

Now I’m going to spend the rest of my review complaining about something I’m noticing lately with new releases. I started realizing this unfortunate repeat offense about three weeks ago, but this past weekend with They Cloned Tyrone, it really became apparent. Along with Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Part 1, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, we have four July releases with some seriously lazy, overly blatant expository dialogue. Movies and TV are the mediums of ‘show, not tell.’ This isn’t literature or radio. It’s a visual artform. Viewers don’t need screenwriters to legitimately spell out what’s happening on screen, or going to happen or give a recap of the whole film. There’s a scene near the beginning of Dead Reckoning, Pt. 1 where the exchanges between a group of government officials sound robotic and unnatural, and it’s mainly because no one in real life speaks like how the characters do in this scene. The whole third act of Barbie spoon feeds the theme and message of the movie as if the viewers are 10-year-olds, despite the PG-13 rating suggesting it’s for teens and grown-ups. Nolan is generally famous for his weak sounding expository monologues, so it wasn’t a surprise they showed up in Oppenheimer.

(Parrish Lewis / Netflix)

In They Cloned Tyrone, the first hour and a half is a fun romp of Boyega’s Fontaine, Parris’ Yo-yo and Foxx’s Slick discovering a secret government plot to clone urban neighborhoods and playing detective in attempt to stop the underground organization. Then in the middle of the climactic battle during the third act, Taylor and co-screenwriter Tony Rettenmaier decide to have a monologue explain the reason everything is happening in the story. Why? Why would you literally explain the point of the movie in words when you have a variety of interesting filmmaking options to show your audience what the plot is leading up to? What’s even more ironic and frustrating is how whenever we get badly written scripts nowadays, people will compare the quality to an AI generated product; and AI programming is one of the reasons Hollywood writers are sitting out of their jobs at the moment.

Like I said at the beginning of my article here, I generally thought They Cloned Tyrone was fine and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys pulpy, mid-budget flicks. It’s great we’ve had such a diverse range of genres to choose from recently. But let’s please remember to use all of our talent while creating art.