By Steve Ryfle
Story
Ain't no story here -- at least not in the fictional sense. This is the
real-life stuff, straight from the streets and straight from the mouths
of our nation's finest pimp's -- guys with names such as Bishop Don
"Magic" Juan, Sir Captain, Fillmore Slim (from San Francisco, natch),
Rosebudd (with two D's) and so on. In candid interviews, each man tells
how he got into "macking" and discusses the ethics and rules of what's
known as "the game."
Acting
Ain't no acting here, either -- except in the clips from a few
pimp-themed Blaxploitation movies that are prominently featured,
including "The Mack," "Willie Dynamite" and "Slaughter's Big Rip-Off."
Direction
The Hughes Brothers have much intestinal fortitude (it takes guts to
enter the pimping community, gain the trust of the real-life macks and
then stick around long enough to get their stories), but "American Pimp"
loses points for monotony and a lack of originality. This territory was
covered before in the all-too-similar HBO documentary "Pimps Up, Ho's
Down" (I could swear that some of the same pimps were interviewed in
both films). And
"American Pimp" is so obsessed with the rules of pimping etiquette that
it forgets to tell a human story.