'They Cloned Tyrone' Blends Hood Comedy, Crack Chicken, and Doppelgangers In This Sci-Fi Adventure Thriller
They Cloned Tyrone, directed by Hollywood newbie Juel Taylor, is an action-packed, Blaxploitation style Dark Comedy that follows a plug, a pimp, and a prostitute on a crack chicken-fueled hunt to uncover a human cloning operation. We follow drug dealer, plug, and apparent doppelganger, “Fontaine,” played by John Boyega, as he suspects that something strange is afoot after he magically wakes up from being shot and killed.
A flamboyant “Slick Charles”, played by famed Jamie Fox, and one of his main girls “Yo-Yo,” played by Teyonah Parris made up an unlikely detective trio. On a mission to uncover the nefarious government conspiracy and active experiment to control the minds of Americans, starting with some of the most disenfranchised, un-united people in The Glen, the hunt began.
Director Juels Taylor does a good job of personifying the self-destructive and reverberating effect of Black males who have lost hope in the inner city. This existential crisis and history of violence and trauma often overlaps with toxic masculinity and black caricatures. This creates the “Tyrone” caricature brilliantly portrayed by Boyega in the film. While the name, Tyrone, is often used to stereotype and pathologize this more negative view of Black masculinity. Taylor subverts the trope and places the blame in the hands of the evil scientists who need Tyrone to exist and maintain the Black control group. Subverted in this film as a comedy, Boyega portrays Fontaine with humility and stoic brutishness. Making us forget the smiley British actor, covered in a fake beard and twists. While Fontaine is haunted by the death of his younger brother, he struggles to pick his life back up, opting to sell drugs to his community and contributing to its overall plight already exacerbated by the government experiment happening just below their feet. After he is presumably “killed” in a shootout. He re-emerges the next day almost as a ghost. Kicking off Fontaine’s journey to both discover himself and get down to the bottom of what is REALLY going on in the neighborhood.
The overall story, while at times a bit on the nose and antiquated from a social commentary perspective, successfully reintroduces audiences to Blaxploitation and the Black film action genre in an entertaining way. The hilarious banter between Yo-yo and Slick Charles offers a refreshing on-screen chemistry and larger-than-life comedic beats. I laughed throughout this movie without even noticing it’s two-hour runtime.
At times, I had trouble placing the geography of “The Glen”, but quickly after the first few scenes, I felt the southern influences of Glenwood Rd., in Southeast Atlanta. I was able to draw on my suspicions about that “white powder,” being enjoyed by patrons at the chicken shacks in the film. “Crack” chicken seasoning has become a staple in late-night chicken dinners all over the city and at some of Atlanta’s and Chicago’s most famous chicken spots (that shall remain nameless).
In an Ebony interview, executive producer (and Morehouse alumnus) Stephen “Dr” Love talks about the film's inception in detail. This was Taylor’s first studio project and he chose to base this film on a true story that was inspired by a close friend's descent into a near five-year depression. This helps us to understand the character of Fontaine in a way that deepens the plot and performance of Boyega. The sheer weight and confusion of a world that has turned against him is captured in Fontaine's character, but even more so, in the use of African American folklore. This paints a surreal world and elevates the more morbid overtone of the film, keeping the message of the community more light and poignant.
In Act Three, we learn about the origins of the cloning initiative after an action-packed takeover of the lab, hidden under a trap house. We watch a classic switcheroo where Fontaine even realizes that he is a clone.
His older, doppelganger self says in the film “Assimilation is better than Annihilation”, as he defends his support of the human “cloning” initiative. The community is being transformed from the inside out by Fontaine’s trauma, once again, for the worst. As an older, more angry, and sinister Fontaine, he tries to “breed out” the Black genes that took his brother and created him. Similar to a real genocidal experiment that ended in 1968. Taylor alludes to the mild “brainwashing” as the primary end goal for the experiments, as opposed to racial extinction, softening the conceptual landing, but making the ending a bit fuzzy.
Using “Tyrone” and “The Glen '' to visually personify urban gentrification and the perpetual angst of Black poverty and its impact on Black men is truly brilliant. From an amazing soundtrack to a gorgeous set and costume design, this was a truly immersive cinematic experience without being too heavy on political commentary, making this an easier watch for a broad audience.
The film's impact was felt even more so in its marketing. Here in New York City, you couldn’t turn your head without seeing They Cloned Tyrone key art on billboards and subways all over Brooklyn and Harlem. After its premiere at the American Black Film Festival 2023, “They Cloned Tyrone” competed in the larger film marketplace simultaneously. As summer blockbusters like “Barbie” (2023) and “Oppenheimer" (2023) are running some of the biggest marketing rollouts of the summer. The fact that this film is still able to grab the eyes of viewers and generate buzz speaks volumes to the power of culturally relevant marketing efforts, despite a noisy media landscape with big budgets, big activations, and big rollouts.
Overall, I think this film is enjoyable and quickly on its way to becoming a film classic. “They Cloned Tyrone” is streaming now on Netflix. Watch the trailer here!