‘Medium-sized laughs and big surprises’ – They Cloned Tyrone review | Films | Entertainment

Sci-fi, comedy, 70s blaxploitation films and the 1930s adventures of teenage sleuth Nancy Drew are just some of the ingredients in this bizarre movie mash-up.

Unsurprisingly, an uneven tone is the main issue with the ambitious and fitfully entertaining first self-directed feature from Creed II screenwriter Juel Taylor.

The film takes place in The Glen, a rundown Black neighbourhood somewhere in America where drug dealer Fontaine (John Boyega) is dealing with a rival who has moved onto his territory.

He’s also miffed that superfly pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) is trying to welch on a debt. After ransacking the tight-fisted, jive-talkin’ reprobate’s hotel room (Charles is amusingly upset about him mishandling his “haberdashery”), Fontaine is gunned down in the parking lot.

Charles and his loudest employee YoYo (Teyonah Parris) witness everything.

As Fontaine was unequivocally dead, the motor-mouthed duo are gobsmacked when he rolls up in perfect health the following day.

It turns out YoYo is a big fan of a certain teenage sleuth so the trio dust off Edward Stratemeyer’s children’s books to help them investigate Fontaine’s apparent reincarnation.

There are medium-sized laughs and big surprises as the film turns into a Get Out-style satire of US race relations.

The chemistry between the three leads keeps this weird brew bubbling away but I wish Taylor had stirred in some zingier one-liners.

They Cloned Tyrone, Cert 15, On Netflix now