Chance The Rapper Has Terrible Taste In Movies
Look, the Donald Trump thing was bad. But we can get past that. After Chance attempted to defend his friend and collaborator Kanye West on Twitter, Donald Trump thanked Chance. Chance had to back his way out of that one as quickly as possible, and he did it, apologizing for letting himself be used by Trump and his cronies. That’s what Trump does; he seizes on anything that could even loosely be considered an endorsement, and he takes off running with it. Plenty of good people have fallen into that trap.
But on the other hand, I don’t know if I can get past Chance The Rapper’s taste in movies. Chance shared a list of his favorite movies on Twitter this morning, and it is both deeply random and truly abysmal. It’s like Chance only watches movies on DVDs that he bought at yard sales and thrift stores. It’s like he thinks the pinnacle of art is the B-level mid-’00s comedy flop. Let’s get into it.
Holes
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
We can give him this one. Holes is a children’s movie that came out in 2003. Shia LaBoeuf was in it when he was just getting famous. So were Jon Voigt and Sigourney Weaver and Tim Blake Nelson and Henry Winkler. As someone who was not a child in 2003, I’ve never seen it. But Chance was a child in 2003. The trailer looks fucking horrible, but maybe the movie is good. Or maybe it’s a matter of childhood attachment to a terrible movie, like me with Ernest Goes To Camp, which is also perfectly acceptable.
The Wackness
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
Here’s where things fall right off a fucking cliff. The Wackness is a coming-of-age movie about a white weed dealer living in New York in the early ’90s. It gets its title from the moment that the love-interest girl tells him that she sees the dopeness in the world, but him? He only sees the wackness. Method Man plays a Jamaican drug kingpin, and he does an accent and everything. It is unwatchable. I can’t believe I enjoy the music of a rapper who considers this to be a great movie.
Life
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
This is presumably the Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence Life, not the gory Alien-ripoff Life that came out last year. It’s fine, I guess? But can you imagine that being your favorite Eddie Murphy movie, in a world where Coming To America exists?
The Brothers Bloom
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
A gallingly twee heist caper and unabashed Wes Anderson ripoff that remains easily the worst movie that director Rian Johnson has ever made. I made it maybe 20 minutes before tapping out.
The Prestige
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
Give Chance this: The Prestige is definitely the best 2006 movie about old-timey magicians feuding with each other. (Sorry, The Illusionist fans.) It is also maybe the third-worst Christopher Nolan movie. I liked it well enough when it came out and then never felt the slightest compulsion to watch it ever again.
Blue Streak
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
If you’re going to put a turn-of-the-millennium Martin Lawrence vehicle on your favorite-movies list, and if (for some reason) it isn’t Black Knight, then this one is fine, I guess.
Drumline
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
This movie fucking rules, and Chance is entirely right to love it.
ATL
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
Another good one, a coming-of-age 2005 drama that showed that T.I. could be a movie star if the spirit moved him. The plot didn’t make a whole lot of sense — I couldn’t get passed Big Boi’s drug-dealer villain giving out murder threats on a phone that could’ve easily been tapped — but the sense of place was great. T.I. still hasn’t gotten to play the lead in another movie, and director Chris Robinson has gone back to making music videos, which is pretty fucked up.
Accepted
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
Justin Long doesn’t get into college, so he makes up his own fake college. This is a real movie! I’ve never seen it — I’m not entirely sure I realized it existed — but Chance The Rapper’s endorsement has not convinced me to give it a shot.
Stomp The Yard
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
A pretty good collegiate dance-battle movie that, on the list of collegiate dance-battle movies, is still nowhere near as good as Step Up 3. Chris Brown gets killed in the opening scene, which is pretty funny.
Anchorman
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
A truly great movie that has been ruined by an entire generation of yahoos quoting its lines all the time. I own it on DVD, and I will probably never watch it again.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 16, 2018
This is definitely a movie that exists. I probably watched 15 minutes of it on cable once and then promptly forgot all about it. Maybe it’s great! Maybe it’s a fucking masterpiece. I didn’t make Acid Rap, so you probably shouldn’t listen to me.
Shout out to Chance The Rapper for joining the cast of Trolls 2, thus achieving the dream and moving from a mere fan of terrible-movie history to an active participant. And also shout out to Chance for being open enough to share his tastes with the world, even if those tastes are verifiably horrendous.