HANGIN’ WITH THE HOMEBOYS
Kimberly Russell, and Mary B.
For more than half of this century, movie audiences weren’t “targeted” through a divide-and-conquer strategy the way they are now. Even when the theaters themselves were segregated, people of all classes, races, and ages usually went to the same movies. Now that we’re all divided into categories and expected to see “our own” movies at “our own” theaters–largely, it would seem, to serve the business schemes of others–we often get herded into choices that we might not otherwise have made, and movies that we might have liked get lost in the shuffle.
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We get to know these people better, however, and then we see that their similarities and differences–which may be part of the stereotypes–spark their interactions. Willie and Vinny are both shiftless, Tom and Johnny are hardworking; Vinny and Tom are suave, Johnny and Willie are socially awkward; Vinny and Tom are generally cheerful, Willie and Johnny are often depressed. And they keep tweaking one another about these traits. Each young man has at least one illusion shattered over the course of the night; as we get to know them, our own illusions about them are shattered as well.
Vinny is in some ways the most pathetic of the homeboys, but he also seems the most unflappable; he’s humiliated by an Italian-American cop, rebuffed by countless women, and knocked to the group by Johnny, but by the end he’s still carrying on as if nothing has happened. After the opening credits, he’s the last of the four to be introduced, and he’s the last one we see in the movie; both times, he’s waking up and proceeding to business as usual.
