Bebe's Kids (1992)

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The main characters from the movie Bebe's Kids.

Bebe's Kids is a 1992 American adult animation comedy film directed by Bruce W. Smith who would later created The Proud Family, and released by Paramount. The movie was based on the late Robin Harris's stand-up comedy act[1].

Plot

The movie recounts a date-from-hell involving Robin Harris's alter ego who offers to take Jamika and her son Leon to an amusement park, Fun World, in hopes to impress her. Only to found out later that Bebe's kids, LaShawn, Kahlil, and Pee-Wee are also tagging along. All hell broke lose as they are uncontrollably rambunctious[2].

Empowerment

It was the first animated feature film specifically by, about, and (arguably) for African-Americans. Despite its ambitious intentions, the film was a commercially and critical failure. Bebe's Kids represents a marked departure from the nihilism and violent realism of "the urban ghetto film cycle" toward a light-hearted hip-hop cinema that not only showed a different vision of urban Black life, but also proved to white audiences that hip-hop was edgy, exciting, and safe (Kunze, 2017)[3]. The movie explored topics such as, Hip-Hop, music, urban riots, and whitebread theme parks[4].

References

  1. Bebe's Kids. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  2. Bebe's Kids (1992). Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  3. Close-Up: Hip-Hop Cinema. Kunze, Peter C., 2017, Close-Up: Hip-Hop Cinema "We Don't Die, We Multiply": Bebe's Kids, Hip-Hop Aesthetics, and Black Feature Animation, Indiana University Press, p.226. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  4. Bebe's Kids. Retrieved December 22, 2020.