Trippin'

Plot

Greg is nearing the end of his high school days as graduation slowly approaches. He is also anxiously awaiting prom and has the hopes of going with Cinny, the school's local beauty. As he tries to ask his parents for help paying for prom, they begin nagging him after finding out he hasn’t filled out one college application, telling him they won’t give a dime until he fills one out. Along with these wants, Greg is also an avid daydreamer and is always daydreaming ("trippin'") over everything.

Cast

Deon Richmond as Gregory Reed

Maia Campbell as Cinny Hawkins

Donald Faison as June Nelson

Guy Torry as Fish

Aloma Wright as Louise Reed

Harold Sylvester as Willie Reed

Cleavon McClendon as Jamal Reed

Bill Henderson as Gramps Reed

Michael Warren as Shapic

Countess Vaughn as Anetta Jones

Stoney Jackson as Kenyatta

Dartanyan Edmonds as LaDomal

Anthony Anderson as Z-Boy

Production notes

Trippin' was filmed on location in California in the city of Los Angeles in 1998. Narbonne High School in Harbor City was used for most of the film's school shots. Harbor City in Los Angeles was also a location used for filming as some of the film's scenes take place on the RMS Queen Mary. The working title of the film while it was in production was G's Trippin, but this was later shortened to its before release.

Reception

Trippin' was poorly received by critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 18% of 28 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Trippin' struggles to balance its raunchy teen comedy elements against an unfortunate tendency towards preachy moralizing."

Robert Dominguez of the New York Daily News wrote: "Picture Walter Mitty as a black high school senior and you get the essence of 'Trippin'', a disjointed, lowbrow comedy about a teen coping with his uncertain future through daydreams. Unlike Danny Kaye's milquetoast Mitty character, however, Greg Reed's (Deon Richmond) flights of fancy are often raunchy, R-rated affairs complete with a rap music score and scantily clad video vixens which should appeal mightily to the film's urban-teen target market." He added that the film "trips up on its own scattershot plot and stereotypes, losing steam early once the novelty of Greg's fantasies wears off." Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times wrote: Wrapped like candy in a sure-fire come-on of bouncing bosoms and firm young female bodies, "Trippin'' is a sermon aimed primarily at teen-age black male high school students.

The message: Get real. Get a diploma. Try to go to college.

And the payoff for this effort?

Why, you get to have all the sex you want with the prom queen.

"Trippin"' is a juvenile comedy with its heart in the right place and its airy head incapable of applying logic to its script. Gene Seymour of the Los Angeles Times called the film "serviceable as an undemanding date movie. It’s not too dissimilar from the teen movies that have proliferated this season; Trippin' looks a lot like an Afterschool Special goosed with dirty words and R-rated sex. With its energetic young cast and flashes of insolence, you wish for more coherence and less meandering in the script. You also wish it would goof on its own didactic impulses. That way, even if it didn’t make sense, you wouldn’t care." Steve Murray of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that the film "keeps trippin’ up on its own mixed message" by "pandering to the basic instincts of its target teen audience. One dream scene features a recruited from a college called 'Morehoward', known as 'Mo Ho' for short. And we get the spectacle of June turning a naked woman into a banana split via whipped cream and chocolate sauce. When June calls a woman a 'bitch', the movie lets her punch him out. He also gets his comeuppance from the many girls he’s lied to. Still, it doesn’t compensate for the ways 'Trippin'' presents most of its women as playthings. Even Cinny never gets to be more than an idealized dream girl One of the film’s subplots has June getting pressed into service by the neighborhood drug dealer The plot seems to be an excuse to trot out a “Terminator”-style fantasy for G an ammo-heavy revenge scenario that’s difficult to enjoy so soon after the Littleton, Colo., slayings. Oh, and for the record, this is another of the countless recent teen flicks that climax at a prom. Nick Carter of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said: You think it’s crazy to make a movie running through the oldest and boldest caricatures and stereotypes of African-American culture?

Release

Trippin' was released during the start of the summer movie season of 1999. It was released in a limited number of theaters compared to the summer blockbusters released around the same time. The film did well enough to crack the top ten in gross receipts during its first few weeks of release.