Stereotypes Don’t Just Disappear Into Thin Air – Review

dvd-stereotypes200Stereotypes Don’t Just Disappear Into Thin Air

with Buzz Cartier, Jillian Gold, Rocco Martone
Directed by Bill Zebub
(Bill Zebub Productions)
by Ari M. Joffe

Somebody needs to smack the shit out of Bill Zebub for having the balls to try to sell this movie to the buying public. Let me sum this up real easy for all you: This film is a 98 minute excuse for Zebub and his buddies to let their racist flag fly and say the word “nigger” as many times as they can.

Like most of writer/director/producer/actor Bill Zebub’s “films” (and I use that term as loosely as possible), Stereotypes… is extremely thin on actual plot. There’s really is no rhyme or reason to what happens from one scene to the next. I mean, you’d almost think the film was improvised. But dialogue this awful doesn’t just fly out of people’s mouths naturally, it has to be created by some asshole who can’t recognize his own limitations as a writer, or for that matter, a human being.

Zebub is trying to pitch this stinker as a good natured “let’s make fun of everybody” un-PC comedy for folks tired of being spoon-fed bland politically correct humor. But in order to pull off this kind of humor, there has to be some brains behind it. It’s gotta be witty. Take a look at the work of talented comedians and writers like Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Denis Leary, and Dave Chappelle who’ve effectively used humor to examine issues of race and racism. In the context of certain scenes in a film like Blazing Saddles, the use of the word “nigger” is absolutely, piss-your-pants hilarious.

Throwing around racist terms, or perpetuating antiquated stereotypes is not in the least bit funny when it’s being done in an overtly malicious way, like the scene in Stereotypes… in which Zebub, in a full black-face Sambo get up (and sporting a homemade t-shirt that reads “Malcolm X” on the front and “I Is A Nigger” on the back), jumps around like a monkey and makes ape noises. That’s just disgusting.

It requires a high level of intelligence to pull off humor of the potentially inflammatory, social commentary variety. Neither Bill Zebub nor anyone else associated with this film possess such intelligence.
(www.thegrimoire.com)