Recently, I’ve found myself describing a movie that I like with “it looks good.” It’s a compliment with an effectiveness that adapts with the trends. While it may have sounded vague a decade ago, the compliment is intended to be more sharp-tuned as we see certain sectors of the movie industry screeching to a halt in the dead zone of uninspired imagery and camerawork. It’s not an adjective I gatekeep for exceptional circumstances (like most others would mention, Past Lives and Across the Spider-Verse are recent examples). When I say it, I mean to bring attention to the fact that the movie looks like it was conceived and executed by living, breathing people.

This might be confused with the common phrase “That looks good,” which is often spoken as the window of opportunity most people will give to a movie they haven’t seen before. That’s how I decided to watch Creed II writer Juel Taylor’s directional debut They Cloned Tyrone. My intrigue was sparked by the suggested sci-fi-Blaxpoitation-infused aesthetic, supported by John Boyega’s fun transformation from the clean-cut franchise poster boy to the stone-faced drug dealer Fontaine, who minds his own business but resorts to casual violence within the Glen, a fictional predominantly Black Southern neighborhood. Even though it was shot digitally, the film’s graininess impresses upon the viewer as a VHS tape found at a cool relative’s basement.

In the beginning of the film, Fontaine meets his untimely demise when he is fatally shot in a parking lot. He wakes up the next morning, feeling slightly off but none the wiser until an incredulous Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), pimp and one of Fontaine’s clients, tells him that he “pulled a 50 Cent” when he should have been six feet under. Fontaine and Slick approach Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), a sex worker with dreams of getting out of the Glen, about the car that might have been responsible for Fontaine’s supposed murder. They trace the sightings of that car to a trap house, which ends up being a front of an underground laboratory. With little explanation, they find another “Fontaine” lying lifeless on a hospital gurney.

Indeed, the movie looks good. Taylor’s unfearful concoction of time periods make for a distinctive vision. If it weren’t for the mention of the 50 Cent shooting or the use of “blockchain” in a conversation, assuming that the movie took place in the ’70s should be a blameless mistake. The costume design dedicates monochromatic palettes to our characters: Charles looking like he walked off the set of Super Fly in a purple fur-collared trench coat, Yo-Yo’s cropped yellow mink coat accentuated with her thigh-high chaps (a nod to her favorite childhood detective), Fontaine in an understated dark green hoodie layered by a quilted jacket — serving a no-nonsense/only-answers attitude in tackling the strange mystery pervading the Glen.

But as a more electrifying compliment, They Cloned Tyrone is so rightfully a good movie. Proudly flaunting its influences, Tyrone vibes as the Mystery Inc. gang investigating Tuskegee if the episode were directed by Atlanta‘s Hiro Murai. However, being able to fully flesh this story beyond a half-hour episode gifts us a hero’s resolution instead of a Black Mirror-like despondent cliffhanger, side-villains to redeem themselves, and tertiary characters with one-liners and static roles (the preacher at Mt. Zion Church, Biddy at the corner) that help enrichen the type of neighborhood that is worth saving.

However, at the core of Tyrone is our trio, a team dynamic that is worth following to the seventh locked door or an eerie basement. Foxx, who holds the talent and star power to have made this a solo feature, has his character stands shoulder-to-shoulder (but often toe-to-toe in amusing quibbles and frivolous complaints) with Parris and Boyega. Yo-Yo is the brain power and heart of the trio, guided by her stock knowledge of Nancy Drew novels and intuition for the right thing — all of which Parris performs without flinching or missing a beat. As mentioned before, Boyega’s performance is for a hardened, unshowy character, but he is able to demonstrate restraint amongst the kookiness of everyone and everything else, meeting Fontaine where he needs him. All three are a trifecta of significance, screen presence, and no-skip scenes — a feat that not many stories are able to pull off for original characters. Without needing to, writers Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier successfully builds a world from the ground up, using the intrigue of the mission, time to familiarize with main characters and NPCs, and keeping the visual engagement consistent to make sure that They Cloned Tyrone is worth your while.

In addition to Tyrone‘s retrofuturism, the boundaries of its genre are also cloudy. It might not have the violent hot-shit tricks like Sweetback or Foxy Brown nor the revelatory shock value of a science fiction experiment, but it luckily doesn’t have to lean on color-by-number designations that genre films might find themselves limited to. It’s much easier to not pin down Tyrone to any expectation (though I’d like to think of this as Boyega’s grown-up version of his character in Attack the Block). Instead, take the hilarious scene in the first ten minutes where Fontaine flatly hits a gang member with his car while a child accomplice in the passenger seat describes why Fontaine is like Squidward. Listen to the score’s sinister organ chords when the trio finds that the church, presumed to be a safe haven, is also another entrance to the laboratory. Watch how the camera skillfully tracks the trio pacing in the bathroom as they freak out about the inevitable discovery that the Glen is part of a cloning experiment. I’m almost baffled that, despite the underlying darkness, I found myself starting a second rewatch within the same week, knowing that there is a cozy Saturday-morning comfort in watching these characters come together to save the day.

(And fear not, fans of distinguished theme songs: there is a popular song, revised by the original artist, at the end of the credits that literally made me giddy. Tyrone looks good, sounds good, is good — what more can you want?)

They Cloned Tyrone
2023
dir. Juel Taylor
122 min.

Now streaming on Netflix