Carmen: A Hip Hopera Movie Recap (2001)

 

Da Brat kicks off this movie and introduces us to the story Carmen, only this time in the form of hip-hop. Sadly, she would not be narrating this film throughout. The story begins with Sergeant Derek Hill (Mekhi Phifer), an officer for the Philadelphia Police Department. We got to a corner, where JD is dealing drugs but is stop by Lieutenant Frank Miller (Mos Def). He an undercover cop and a crooked one at that. But we then see Bow Wow being an unfortunate passenger of a carjacking. A lot of moving parts already.  We never hear from the driver but we see some of Miller’s dirty works. He plants drugs on Bow Wow to increase his charge, sending him to jail. Hill catches wind of this and tries to confront him but he doesn’t have the courage to step to him because of his rank.

Carmen Jones Movie Recap

At a nightclub we are shown Hill’s fiancé Michaela (Reagan Gomez-Preston), who works for the nightclub. Miller tries to flirt with Michaela until Hill reveals that they are engaged. And this is when Carmen Brown (Beyonce Giselle Knowles) makes her entrance. That’s where she performs If Looks Could Kill, the first of many cringe rap songs here. During the song, Miller and his partner tries to flirt but she isn’t feeling their vibe. Instead, she catches eyes for Hill. Michaela confronts him about his wandering eyes, and we get another cringy rap song where Caela doesn’t want him to stay on the force after they wed as she fears for his life but that’s the price he chose when he took the job.

Just then, Carmen gets into a fight with a local patron after she accuses Carmen of having wandering eyes for her man. After the fight, the owner decides to press charges against Carmen as she had a history of bad behavior in the club. Miller orders the off-duty Hill to take Carmen in. Hill refuses as he had plans to be with his fiancé, but again Miller asserts his rank. After this the patron decides to sucker punch one of the cops after he tries to return her weave. It’s the edit that makes me laugh, especially after Miller said she has to go to jail. After all of this, Carmen tries to flirt with Hill and it’s another cringy rap scene and Hill tries to shut her down and keeps reminding Carmen that he is engaged. She tells Hill about a ring that she has and wants to take it home and leave it in a safe place as if she goes to jail, she won’t see it again. Hill agrees.  All this is Carmen’s plan to seduce Hill and he folds like grandma on laundry day, probably worse than Joe did. It’s the Last Great Seduction. The next morning, Hill is awakened by Miller and arrests Hill for letting a fugitive get away. Miller then brings in Michaela and she finds out about the infidelity.

Carmen is hiding out with her friends Rasheeda (Rah Digga) & Nikki (Joy Bryant). Carmen lies about the charges being dropped and they do a tarot card reading. After the reading, she can’t stop thinking about Hill. She rights a letter to Hill, while he’s in the clink. Hill talks to Bow Wow about his thoughts and how he couldn’t keep Carmen off his mind, cue cringe rap scene. At a club called The Spot we meet Blaze, a bigtime rapper. He catches his eye for Carmen. She tells Blaze about her dream of becoming an actress. Blaze wants her to come to LA. Rasheeda & Nikki is going to Cali with Blaze but Carmen wants to stay and wait for Hill. We get the most cringiest green screen rap scene of the entire movie. But Carmen promises she’ll be in Cali in at least two weeks.

Hill shows up after his release. Carmen tells him that she plans on moving to LA and wants to take Hill. That’s when she finds out Hill is on probation and can’t leave Pennsylvania for a year. They get into a rap argument about making Hill to choose. That night Hill goes to the cop hangout club from the beginning. Lt. Miller decides to mock Hill as he feeling Black & Blue. Miller f’s around and finds out gets sucker punched after he called Carmen a gardening tool. Miller wants Hill arrested for assaulting an officer. After realizing what he’s done, Hill decides to take Carmen to LA and violate his probation.

Once in LA, things don’t go well for Hill and Carmen. Carmen acting dreams are off to a slow start and Hill can’t find work because of his record. At this point, they can’t get out of this run down hotel that they are staying in. They get into another argument as she feels like Hill is bringing her down, and he tells her to Stop That. Carmen finds her friends Rasheeda & Nikki (more so the movie made us think that). They have been up to lavish lifestyle Blaze has provide them. They go to tarot card reading with father Clef. Rasheeda has fame and fortune as does Nikki. But for Carmen, she pulls out death. And we get the best music scene of the movie because the chemistry between her and Clef was solid. He tells her that the Cards never lie. Carmen realizes that she is wasting time with Hill and decided to pursue Blaze and live life to the fullest.

Back in Philly, Miller gets a warning about his position as the Philly PD is cracking down on dirty cops. He decides to talk to Michaela on a tip where Hill could be. He lies saying that if she could help find Hill, Hill could get his job back without problems. In LA, Carmen finally catches up to Blaze. Caela calls Hill and warns Miller that he’s after him. Miller tries and talk to a rookie cop who was close to Hill and all this to find hill. Miller gives him an undisclosed amount of money to coheres an answer for Hill’s whereabouts. Hill wants to go back to Philly and he wants to take Carmen with him. But Carmen wants to stay in LA and Carmen leaves him. Carmen is taking a bath and after her bath a radio falls in the bathtub and that was a sign of her impending doom.

Hill talks to the rookie cop as he spots Carmen on tv before the Blaze concert. Hill wants to get Carmen back in a stalker-ish type way. The rookie cop talks to Miller and directs him to the Blaze concert. Towards the end of the Blaze concert, Hill sneaks backstage as does Miller and confronts Carmen. Miller is stalking Hill and pulls a silencer on Hill but instead put two in Carmen’s back and that was that. Miller is about to go for the kill in Hill but his silencer got jammed and Hill chases after Miller. They get into a fight and that ends when Hill throws Miller over the ledge, killing him too. LAPD comes in to arrest Hill for double murder as the news pit him as a jealous ex who shot Carmen and push Miller over the ledge and news said that Miller was hooking up with Carmen. Da Brat closes the film and pays tribute to the fallen Carmen and I guess the Bugs Bunny quote works here too.

This was a movie for the era. There where a ton of things that won’t fit today like the rap scene and all of the rapping feels force and cringy (felt like I said that word a lot in this video). Let me go through the characters in my thoughts. Start off with Blaze, I would say he’s not as toxic as Husky Miller was on Carmen Jones, he wasn’t as desperate in getting Carmen to be with him outside of him being a rapper, Blaze isn’t that interesting. Next is Miller, and someone needs to call Mariah because he was obsessed with Hill. Willing to do anything to make Hill’s life a living hell all because of his rank. Hill, same thing I said about Joe applies here too. All he had to do was take Carmen to jail. Instead, he gets hypnotized by the lust of Carmen. I don’t know what spell Carmen put on Hill but he’d never wanted to lose her. He threw away almost everything and, in the end, he lost the girl. Carmen, I think the Jones character was better. The problem with Beyonce Carmen was her being naïve because she thought it was her destiny (no pun intended) to move to LA, become a famous actress and have her own Malibu Mansion and we don’t get to see her grind for it. It’s not going to be given to you on a silver platter. To be honest after watching this, with some bad editing, force rhyming yeah, this movie was kind of rough. I can’t really recommend it. No wonder we didn’t get many hip-hoperas afterward.