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On paper, this doesn’t look like a bad story. Super Fly has all the makings of a top notch made for basic cable potboiler, if not a major motion picture. It’s got honorable dope dealers, corrupt cops, deceit, betrayal, and intrigue. It has racial oppression. It has a live performance by the Curtis Mayfield Experience. It has Pimp Cars. It has a hooker with a heart of gold. It has one of the most unintentionally hilarious, awkward and disturbing love scenes I’ve seen in any movie, of any rating. The only thing it doesn’t have is Michael Bay on horseback, wrapped in Christmas lights, screaming through a bullhorn as he blows up an entire city block for no reason. There’s really an incredible amount of stuff going on here, and that’s exactly what weighs the whole damn thing down.

There just isn’t a sufficient level of technical competence behind this film to make it truly work. The direction is over cooked and amateurish. The sound editing is so bad – so very, very bad - that I’m actually pretty sure I could have done it better myself. Terrible dialogue sounds even more terrible when it’s delivered terribly, and this movie is deeply afflicted on both counts. A lot of people won’t like hearing that, or will say that it doesn’t matter. Super Fly enjoys its cult status in part because so many people fail to realize that it was more influential than good. And don’t expect me to give it a pass for being a genre picture. Not all so-called “blaxploitation” films were bad ones. And if maximizing your message (and your profit) by catering to a specific audience is a crime, I guess Spike Lee, Tyler Perry and the Wayans Brothers are all criminals.
Actually…they are. But that’s an argument for another day.

Super Fly is simply a bad movie. The climactic fight scene looks like they just filmed a bunch of drunks to slap fight in front of a camera. The dialogue is high school Thanksgiving play bad. The film generates several significant subplots during its 90 minute run which are dropped and never again addressed. It’s like a patchwork of lukewarm dramatic sketches instead of a coherent story. It’s as though someone important died halfway through filming but they decided to finish the thing anyway. And yet the movie really does have an interesting core narrative. A drug dealer sees his life as a dead end and tries to get out, only to be thwarted at every turn by parasites who aren’t ready to let their cash cow out to pasture. Plus, there are a handful of surprisingly heartfelt performances that keep me from dismissing Super Fly as just another craptastic low budget thriller.

Priest got his start thanks to a leg up from Scatter, and is now approaching his mentor for another hand out so he can retire. His main girlfriend - the only honest person he knows - reminds him that a good man doesn’t need a million dollars to walk away from a life of crime. But Priest disagrees, because he doesn’t want to have to work for a living. He’s just a spoiled brat who wants to take his ball and go home because he found out it’s hard to be a pimp. and you want badly to judge him for this but you really can’t. Thanks to O’Neal’s surprisingly sympathetic portrayal, you get the idea that Priest already knows what he is and isn’t any happier with it than you are. Sometimes the right guy gets cast for the right part at the right time, and despite his acute lack of talent it works. And sometimes, it even becomes legendary. Simply put, Ron O’Neal was NOT a good actor but he WAS Super Fly - and you were not. Can you dig it?

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