REVIEW: They Cloned Tyrone [2023]

Rating: R | Runtime: 122 minutes
Release Date: July 14th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Netflix
Director(s): Juel Taylor
Writer(s): Tony Rettenmaier & Juel Taylor

Ain’t no snow, but I can still ski in it.

When Fontaine (John Boyega) abruptly wakes in his bed and proceeds to follow the same routine we watched him perform the previous day, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’ve stepped into a time loop. Director Juel Taylor and co-writer Tony Rettenmaier intentionally throw this curveball to both mess with expectations and set-up one of many great comedic sequences once he’s seen banging on the same door he pounded twenty-four hours ago. Because as soon as Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) realizes who’s knocking, he’s starts babbling like a crazy person since he knows what we know. Tyrone is dead.

The title says it all: They Cloned Tyrone. Who is the “they”? Well, that’s the question he, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) are going to try and Nancy Drew an answer from. Is it a conspiracy? Some weird white dudes with afros? Kiefer Sutherland’s self-proclaimed “mall cop” Nixon? Maybe it’s a little of everything as the trio finds themselves descending metal elevators inexplicably located inside trap houses that open to high-tech laboratories and a bustling scientific colony beneath their feet. And what starts as a messed-up mystery for one man’s identity soon becomes a life or death scenario for the world.

Think a grounded Sorry to Bother You. Like if Boots Riley was replaced by Jordan Peele since the scope is sci-fi surreal and the tone social horror. Throw ideas touching on eugenics, socio-economic enforced community prisons, and existential dread in a blender with an ample amount of hilarity courtesy of these purposefully designed stereotypes (Tyrone the drug dealer, Slick Charles the pimp, and Yo-Yo the prostitute) having their eyes opened and horizons broadened and you can get a sense of the ride that ensues. Just because it proves more of an entertaining romp than political satire, though, doesn’t mean the latter won’t resonate.

Its tongue-in-cheek nature simply helps open the door to the wild philosophical ideas at its center. Watching these three easily forsaken characters authentically react to, as Yo-Yo succinctly puts it, “crossing the Rubicon” is laugh-out-loud funny precisely because they wouldn’t in a million years believe they’d become embroiled in something so insane. And on the other side of the coin, neither would Nixon. So, of course the latter underestimates his opponents. Of course, they’ll try to bring the very chaos his bosses count on them delivering in the Glen down to this sanctuary to create absolute pandemonium.

Add the anachronistic aesthetic (my partner walked in and caught Slick Charles mentioning 9/11 before doing a double take and saying, “I thought this was set in the 70s”), the “white people targeting Black people via cliché” jokes, and a very game Foxx and Parris bringing the laughs opposite Boyega’s effective straight man and it’s easy to get caught up in the high concept underpinnings because the surface vehicle is so damn enjoyable. It might not have the cinematic chutzpah of a Sorry to Bother You or Get Out, but it delivers the popcorn appeal to potentially supply many of the same themes to a much broader audience.