David Krumholtz has carved a pretty good career out for himself as the quintessential “Oh, that guy!” character actor. While his name eludes most people, he has been consistently appearing in higher and higher-profile films with increasingly substantial roles, and he’s been juggling that with a leading role on the successful TV show whose title I really, really, really, really, really hate to type, Numb3rs. Now, he’s heading to the next level with his film career and it looks like he’s chosen a pretty damn good guy to help him do that.
Krumholtz’s next film, Attorneys at Raw, is not only a starring vehicle that he wrote, but one that will produced by the much beloved Judd Apatow. That’s a great pedigree, and I think the flick will need it as the concept sounds a bit Jamie Kennedy, which is to say the opposite of good. It’s the story of two young attorneys that decide that they want to become rappers. That’s it.
Look, I’ve seen many an attempt at mainstream hip-hop parody from Ali G to Be Cool to Jamie Kennedy’s Malibu’s Most Wanted, and aside from almost always turning out badly, they all miss the basic fact that hip-hop can’t be parodied these days. It is already a joke that has far surpassed the idiocy of earlier spoofs like CB4 and Fear of a Black Hat. Worse yet, the version of “rap” that makes it into these films is a severely outdated snapshot that bears little resemblance to the trap music (i.e. intricate tales of drug-dealing) that is mainstream hip-hop these days. The Young Jeezy and Rick Ross types of today are more concerned with triple beams and corners than liquor, bling and nine millimeter handguns. The effect is what it would be like if black directors wanted to do ostensibly present-day parodies of rock, but everyone wore spandex, teased hair, and played arenas with pyro and pentagrams in the background. Hip-hop today is just as cartoonish as it comes off on film, no doubt, but it’s a completely different cartoon.
Interestingly enough, this won’t even be our first glimpse at a Krumholtz/Apatow teamup for music business-based comedy. Krumholtz also just signed up to play a record producer in the Apatow-produced, Jake Kasdan-directed John C. Reilly comedy Walk Hard.