Amazon.com
Hip-hop czar Master P cowrote, executive produced, and stars in I Got the Hook-Up, which is truly one of the more surreal urban comedies ever seen. P plays Black, a small-time hustler who scams a shipment of cell phones. With his partner Blue (A.J. Johnson) and semi-girlfriend Lorraine (Gretchen Palmer), Black snags a bit of cellular service from a large corporation and starts making a bundle from cell-phone sales. Unfortunately, the phones are a bit undependable, and a gangbanger accidentally broadcasts the location of a package of cash over the radio, setting off a treasure hunt. The gangbanger swears vengeance on Black and Blue, the cellular company starts investigating the surge in use, the FBI gets involved--everyone's on the hunt for our heroes. This plot description, however, is much more direct than the way it plays out. I Got the Hook-Up is a bizarre conglomeration of oddball characters and odd, off-the-cuff incidents, such as when a couple of cops get called in for a domestic dispute, only to discover one of the cop's wives, a dwarf, having an affair with a guy in a leather bat suit. Or there's the funeral of a gangster that turns into a brawl; the pleasure palace a TV repairman has in the back of his shop; an FBI interrogation in which the agents tear off Mission: Impossible-style rubber masks--the plot quickly gets lost in the madness. Which is not a bad thing, really. Tall, laconic P and short, excitable Johnson make an appealing Mutt and Jeff comic duo. Featuring cameos by Ice Cube, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and others. --Bret Fetzer