Next Day Air Movie Review

Next Day Air is the rare type of disaster that's so putrid, you stop paying attention halfway through and start passing the time questioning why the cast would sign on the first place.

Donald Faison, I assume, was on hiatus from his steady television gig on Scrubs and needed a project to bridge the gap. He ambles his way through this laughless dud as Leo, a marijuana-addicted employee of Next Day Air who mistakenly delivers a cardboard box filled with cocaine to the inept bank robbers in apartment 302 instead of the waiting drug dealers in 303. That's a tough floor.

For the rest of the picture, stereotypical cardboard cutouts of inexperienced, wannabe gangsters (played by Mike Epps, Wood Harris, Omari Hardwick, and Cisco Reyes) trade nonsensical insults, brandishes all types of hand cannons, inhale enough dope to paralyze Snoop Dogg's posse and -- in general -- spin their wheels. Poor Emilio Rivera actually has to play a Mexican crime boss named Bodega -- one example of the numerous insulting insinuations made by Blair Cobbs' flabby, vulgar, and stupid script.

There's no fluidity to Air, and when the story plays itself out, you realize the entire film could have been condensed to a 20-minute short without sacrificing much. The cast fills time bantering about protecting their fragile egos, slapping women, making money (illegally), and scratching their privates. Scenes are so clumsy, it appears the actors have improvised their lines, though it's possible Cobbs wrote those asides, as well.

My imaginary casting exercise only worked for so long. Eventually I got around to the talented Mos Def, who appears in two disposable scenes as a Next Day Air driver who steals from the boxes he delivers, and the versatile Debbie Allen, who briefly cameos as Leo's disappointed mother. Why would either of them bother? Perhaps they're related to the director, whose name is Benny Boom. They still should have realized, however, that his picture is a bust.

Oh yes she did.