This file was generated 2002-06-09 04:23 GMT. This movie's information hasn't changed since 2001-01-29.
Friday is a little like Clerks. Both are meant to be "day in the life", although somewhat extraordinary days. Friday's centerpieces are Ice Cube and Chris Tucker. I've enjoyed both in later movies, Tucker in The Fifth Element and Rush Hour, and Cube in Three Kings. Tucker is dialed back here, especially compared to his hyper persona in Fifth Element, but his character works even without the over-the-top zaniness.
Good though Cube and Tucker are, it's often the supporting cast that is most entertaining. Paula Jai Parker is enjoyable as a fantastically exaggerated psycho girlfriend. Bernie Mac plays a flawed preacher with great energy, almost as though the character could explode at any moment. My favorite character in the movie by far has to be Mr. Jones, played by John Witherspoon. Almost every line out of his mouth gets a laugh, and he plays it straighter than you can imagine. I know I'm not alone in my enjoyment because some of the lines have since been immortalized on clothing, available from Witherspoon's official site: Bang Bang Bang Bang.
The DVD for Friday has a few tricks up its sleeve. It includes fifteen minutes of interview footage with producer Patricia Charbonnet and twenty-five minutes with director F. Gary Gray. Both of these are presented question by question, requiring interaction to play the answer to the next question. There are also two trailers, several deleted scenes and two music videos, one by Cube, and one by Dr. Dre. Biographies for a surprising number of cast members are available, complete with filmographies copied and pasted from the IMDB. Sometimes the information is a notch too complete, like specifying exactly how 'Tiny' Lister is credited in each movie.
The menu design is reasonably usable, although I occasionally had trouble locating the controls to go up in the hierarchy. There is also an exceptionally poor choice of typeface used in the scene locator screens and the interview question screens. These fonts may look fine on a computer, but they're awful on a television screen. The scene selection menus are visually interesting but very distracting. Subtitles are available in English, Spanish, and French. The English subtitles leave a bit to be desired, as demonstrated by the untranscribed rapid-fire Spanish into which Tucker lapses occasionally.
See the IMDB information on Friday's DVD or compare prices at DVD Price Search.