Writer-director Bryan O’Dell’s Ain’t This a B is a portrait of Los Angeles life that draws from Thank God It’s Friday and Car Wash a taste of the Dolemite franchise swagger. The film uses contemporary characters trying to make their lives better, peppered with musical beats, language, laughter, and danger, blending humour and low-life hustle with moments of shocking cruelty.
At the heart of the story is Earl, played with charm and hustler’s heart by Giovanni Watson. Earl is a man scraping for survival in a city that never stops moving. He’ll do almost anything for a dollar, except wash cars, so he works children’s parties dressed as a clown. Beneath the humour is a quiet sadness of how a dream, in this case, the “American dream’ is out of reach by conventional means.
“Together they hustle small-time angles, spinning dreams of escape that feel just close enough to touch.”
His partner in schemes is Candy (Juliah Cheree Taylor), a single mother juggling motherhood and sex work with wit and a survivor’s instinct to protect her son even from his estranged father. Together they hustle small-time angles, spinning dreams of escape that feel just close enough to touch. Their chemistry carries the film’s first act: a loose, funny, lovely moment when Earl’s brother James‘s played by Brian Britt, gets dressed up in black as a Ninja and goes slinking across a street.
The early tone of Aint this a B feels almost a celebratory look at working-class L.A., where people clown to get by, flirt to forget, and dance to the soundtrack of a city that never sleeps. The film is filled with scenes of local colour, all-night liquor stores, and passing jokes about weed, rent, and cops.
"…a strong example in modern Black cinema without the Spike Lee budget."
