I’ll freely and non-hesitantly cop to being overly enthusiastic for just about any movie or TV show that employs weird and unique tweaks to high-concept sci-fi plots. Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, Russian Doll, and Primer? I’ll take all those on a platter, with a heaping side of Daybreak (with Taye Diggs), Two Distant Strangers and Total Recall. Somehow, Jamie Foxx and John Boyega’s new Netflix movie They Cloned Tyrone invokes the same sense of curiosity-driven wonder as all of those projects, while still standing apart thanks to clever co-writing and direction from Juel Taylor (Creed II, Young. Wild. Free) and golden comedic performances from Foxx and WandaVision standout Teyonah Parris.
Release Date: July 14, 2023
Directed By: Juel Taylor
Written By: Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier
Starring: John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, Jamie Foxx, Kiefer Sutherland, and David Alan Grier
Rating: R for pervasive language, violence, some sexual material and drug use
Runtime: 122 minutes
As a partial conspiracy thriller with haunting layers to explore, They Cloned Tyrone is the kind of movie that’s best experienced without a whole lot of background knowledge to add that much more value to each and every detail that gets parceled out over the two-hour runtime. On the flip side of that coin – which is probably a two-headed coin, given the direct mention of cloning in the title – Juel Taylor and co-writing partner Tony Rettenmaier have concocted a tale so densely packed that some details may fly under the radar whenever Foxx’s past-his-prime pimp Slick Charles and Parris’ strong-willed sex worker Yo-Yo are yelling at each other and stealing all the already eye-catching scenes.
John Boyega is as far away from Hollywood glam as can be in the role of the gold-toothed drug dealer Fontaine, who faces a life-changing moment that throws him dead into the middle of a possible conspiracy that, if this were a fact-based documentary, would be as bothersome and repugnant as anything else in U.S. history. As Slick Charles and Yo-Yo’s destinies become intertwined with Fontaine’s, They Cloned Tyrone weaves between socially bleak satire of A Clockwork Orange and “Oh shit!” comedic sequences echoing the Ghostbusters, Bill and Ted, and Star Wars franchises. The fact that it can bring so many past favorites to mind while still maintaining its own identity is a feat unto itself.
They Cloned Tyrone features arguably career-best performances from Jamie Foxx and more.
As the lead drawing the most emotional beats, John Boyega serves up a performance every bit as effective as the endlessly watchable work delivered by Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris, even if Fontaine himself inherently isn’t nearly as boisterous as Slick and Yo-Yo. Without saying too much, the story itself even helps to contextualize how Boyega mapped out his portrayal, which evolves as Fontaine's life starts to unravel around him.
All that said, They Cloned Tyrone will no doubt be remembered for years to come for everything that Jamie Foxx brings to the role of Slick Charles, who is every bit as manic and explosive as past characters in the actor’s filmography, but in a way that feels like he’s been playing the amicably arrogant shit-talking pimp for many years. The persona fits Foxx like a glove, though a glove that Slick wouldn’t wear himself, so as not to cover up all the gold on his fingers and wrists.
Though Teyonah Parris doesn’t have the same kind of lengthy and genre-spanning career as Foxx, it doesn’t take away from everything she delivers in this career-topping performance – especially since Yo-Yo is the arguably the most thoughtful and effective person of the three to actually engage in a large-scale conspiracy like this, and gives Slick just as much gruff as he gives while still technically being his dutiful employee. Other co-stars such as Kiefer Sutherland (who is on a whole other tier of emoting), David Alan Grier and J. Alphonse Nicholson are also delivering pitch-perfect form, even if the core trio handle all of the heavy lifting.
Director and co-writer Juel Taylor creates a bizarrely winning combination of wild and hilarious sequences within extremely dark storytelling.
By and large, Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier’s Black List script would excel even as solely a straightforward and dramatically meticulous paranoid thriller such as The Conversation or Three Days of the Condor. They Cloned Tyrone would also presumably hit all the marks if it stuck wholly to being an investigation-based buddy comedy in the loose vein of Beverly Hills Cop or Men in Black. But it's more.
It also earns a place in the conversation of racially relevant genre efforts that Jordan Peele is known for, while also separately nailing all the themes and aesthetics necessary to be a memorable ‘70s blaxploitation flick, a trippy Charlie Kaufman narrative, and a modern-day take on the aforementioned Groundhog Day-esque classics. But the fact that it pulls off all of this at the same time is nearly as bonkers as the story itself. And it’s all so lovingly balanced and punctuated by a consistently funkalicious soundtrack that at times grooves the paranoia right out of the room in the best of ways.
They Cloned Tyrone’s hilarity comes from all places in the same way that its darkness does, whether it’s via dialogue, performance, action beats, WTF twists, and so on. It’s a wildly enjoyable NSFW ride from one end of this mysterious neighborhood to the next, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a special shout-out to a character whose sole purpose is to be the epitome of laidback DGAF-ness: Eric B. Robinson Jr.’s Big Moss. He’s arguably the most superfluous character, and yet his 5-8 minutes on screen cements him as being every bit as memorable as Fontaine and other headliners.
The sci-fi plotting can get a little confusing, but it’s so fun that going back for a rewatch is a big plus rather than a slog.
The one place where possible faults can be found with the movie, at least from a casual viewer’s perspective, is that there’s so much going on at all times. The two-hour runtime doesn’t feel overlong, but without a whole lot of fluff to be found, it’s a bit hard to take in every single element that They Cloned Tyrone puts forth in surplus. But that works to the film’s favor, at least in part, by inspiring viewers to want to go back and watch everything again to catch things that were missed the first time around.
And that’s because They Cloned Tyrone also succeeds in avoiding the trap that thickly plotted movies suffer from time and again, in which a third act will almost necessarily have to sacrifice character moments in order to dole out the twists before wrapping things up. That’s an impossibility here, since Foxx and Parris are physically incapable of delivering dialogue and exposition without making it magnetic and energetic.
If They Cloned Tyrone doesn’t end up ranking within my Top 5 Movies of 2023, that necessarily means a bunch of amazing shit is on the way, because as it stands, even my second viewing itself would possibly still make my Top 10. It’s a hilarious and horrifying jigsaw puzzle where confident assumptions are replaced en masse by mistrust and suspicions, and everything that seems normal at first is anything but. I really hope they spinoff Tyrone next.
