Grade: B

If “Plan Nine from Outer Space” deserved the sort of reverential treatment that Tim Burton gave it (and its hapless maker’s other awful movies) in the wondrous “Ed Wood,” certainly there can be no objection to Mario Van Peebles affording recognition to his father’s “Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asss Song,” the gritty, grim 1971 blaxpoitation flick that Melvin made, guerilla-style, in defiance of the studio bosses’ insistence that its heroic portrayal of a black superstud who escapes after killing a couple of racist cops wouldn’t sell. In Mario’s “Baadassssss!” it’s Melvin who earns the earns the titular appellation by not only bucking the system (among other things using a multi-ethnic, non-union crew when the unions were lily-white) and sending a cinematic message that tapped into the revolutionary attitude that had emerged in African-American culture at the time, but doing whatever was necessary to realize his vision–enlisting investors who didn’t always have the most savory backgrounds, shooting on the fly without any legal permission, even forcing his own young son to play some acutely embarrassing scenes.

What’s remarkable about the finished product isn’t that it finally recognizes an unrecognized masterpiece–to the contrary, “Baad Assss Song” is a pretty terrible movie by any objective standard–but that the portrait it draws of Melvin is a warts-and-all one. On the one hand, the picture celebrates his accomplishment in putting everything on the line to do things his way, refusing to follow the dictates of an industry that seemed intent on keeping blacks (and other minorities) in their place, both on the screen and behind the camera. On the other, it doesn’t shrink from depicting his less-than-admirable personal qualities, most notably the single-mindedness that led him to treat his own son in a less than completely protective way. The fact that Mario himself plays Melvin, as well as producing, directing and co-writing the picture, turns the enterprise into something really interesting–a sort of cinematic working out of a son’s ambiguous attitude toward his father, a psychological exercise as well as an artistic one.

In the latter sphere, unfortunately, the new film is a mixed bag. It has a good deal of energy and a splashy visual style, but its mixture of dramatic recreation, interviews and social commentary succeeds only sporadically, and it tends to be drawn in the broadest possible strokes. (Though the budget is obviously much larger than the minuscule one Melvin had on hand for “Baad Assss Song,” the picture cultivates a gritty, seat-of-the-pants look in emulation of the earlier one.) The performances are distinctly variable. Van Peebles is vigorous as Melvin, and young Khleo Thomas is affecting as the teen Mario. There are also nice supporting turns from Paul Rodriguez as a cameraman, David Alan Grier as a porno producer, Saul Rubinek as Van Peebles’ anxious agent, and Vincent Schiavelli as a cautious movie distributor. In just a few scenes Ossie Davis brings his dignified presence to Martin’s father. The rest of the cast, however, range from adequate to amateurish, with T.K. Carter an especially unconvincing Bill Cosby (the comedian’s last minute investment in the movie saved the project).

“Baadasssss!” is a lot of things–a son’s nod of recognition to his father, a way for him to exorcize whatever demons remain from his childhood, an attempt to capture what was arguably a defining moment in the African-American experience and, most importantly, a pretty good yarn. If it goes to extremes in elevating “Baad Assss Song” to classic status and glorifying its influence (the final shot is of the actual Melvin, bathed in glowing light as his eyes peer into the audience), that’s a son’s prerogative. And at least it’s not hagiography.

D-

Hand out the barf bags. “Soul Plane,” which deals with the maiden flight of NWA, the nation’s first black-owned airline, isn’t so much a narrative as a series of sketches pegged on the initial premise. In itself that isn’t a recipe for disaster–after all, it’s the same formula that “Airplane!” used to fine effect back in 1980. But in this case the level of tastelessness and vulgarity should cause cultural security checkpoints to go off.

It’s serendipitous that the picture is being released at the moment Bill Cosby has chosen to ignite a debate on what he sees as the failures of some aspects of African-American society in contemporary America, because “Soul Plane” could serve as exhibit A in favor of his argument. The ploy, if one can call it that, is set in motion when a jobless black dude named Nashawn (Kevin Hart) acts like a jerk on a plane–naturally we’re supposed to sympathize with him because he comes from a poor background and is struggling to succeed, because he’s been disrespected, and because he’s the jive-talking narrator who puts his spin on everything–and wins a huge settlement from the airline, with which he founds NWA. The rest of the movie plays on the funkiness of the operation and the multiple crises and minor catastrophes that plague the first flight. Naturally a great many stock characters are involved, all of them played with bone-crushing exuberance by a cast that seems under the impression they have to reach the last row of the second balcony.

It would be futile, as well as boring, to try to disentangle all the threads that link up through the ninety or so minutes the picture runs; save that they run the gamut from a pilot (Snoop Dogg) who’s an ex-con afraid of heights to two “Big Momma”-type security checkers more interested in doing cavity checks on “players” than watching for weapons. There’s also–ha, ha!–a blind guy who touches stewardesses in the most inappropriate places. Suffice it to say that the real subject of the movie is sex. There are more jiggly shots and suggestive dialogue than would be needed for a dozen other flicks, and people are doing it all over the place. Unfortunately, that’s not unusual in pictures targeted to the black audience. Is it really amusing for African-Americans to be portrayed as insatiable sex machines with absolutely uncontrollable libidos? Isn’t that the grossest form of stereotyping, essentially a new version of Stepin Fetchit? Why, then, are so many black viewers perfectly willing to guffaw at these caricatures, which they might well consider insulting instead? And as if that weren’t bad enough, the other big emphases are potty humor (a toilet scene even cruder than the one in “Dumb & Dumber”) and drug gags. As to make matters still worse, there’s a whole string of gay jokes in the picture (a co-pilot named Gaeman, a male attendant named Flame) that has a really mean-spirited subtext. And, of course, whites must be portrayed as morons. The only Caucasian family aboard are the Hunkees (hah, hah!), who are, of course, the butt of many jokes. Dad is a sweet-hearted, uncomprehending doofus–what else would you expect of somebody played by Tom Arnold?–and his snooty girlfriend a gold-digger who lusts after the first big black man she sees; his kids fall into the precise molds one would predict, too, with the older girl rebellious (a string of sexual references she spews off at one point wants to be a variant of Meg Ryan’s famous orgasm scene in “When Harry Met Sally,” but fails miserably) and the young boy turning abruptly from a nerdy tyke into a hip-hopping gangsta wannabe (a pint-sized version of Jamie Kennedy’s “Malibu’s Most Wanted” character). To top it all off, there’s a streak of ostentatious materialism suffusing the movie that’s almost as gross as its sex-obsession. Put it all together and “Soul Plane” seems a gruesome act of pandering to the basest instincts of its audience, and at the same time the kind of glorification of those instincts that tells viewers that they’re somehow a cultural ideal.

Maybe one shouldn’t be too hard on “Soul Plane.” It’s not much worse that many other recent examples of this new kind of blaxploitation flick. But coming from the same studio that gave us the two “Barbershop” movies, which avoided the stereotypes and had warmth as well as humor, it’s a terrible let-down.