Also this issue:

Cleaning Up
Jennifer Lopez plays down-to-earth to live out on-screen fantasy.
-Cindy Fuchs

Screen Picks
-Sam Adams

New

Continuing

Repertory Film

Showtimes

December 12-18, 2002

movies

Just Beat It

STICKY SITUATION: Leonard Roberts and Nick

Cannon square off in <i>Drumline</i>.

STICKY SITUATION: Leonard Roberts and Nick Cannon square off in Drumline.

Fun with percussion in the rousing Drumline.

by Cindy Fuchs

Devon (Nick Cannon) just can’t help himself. Required to play the drippy high-school band version of R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” at graduation, his drumsticks take over. As soon as he changes it up, his bandmates follow and the crowd gets to nodding. Even the bandleader, initially alarmed by the bangin’ new tempo, joins in.

Devon expects much the same reaction when he gets to Atlanta A&T, the university that recruited him for his skills. The school's show-style marching band is legendary, even if it has fallen on hard times over the past few years, losing the prestigious BET Big Southern Classic repeatedly to another, flashier band. The stakes are high: In this world, the football game provides a useful context for halftime, when the show really starts. Initially thrilled to be where he always dreamed of being, Devon soon learns that, once again, he's slightly out of place -- a raw if brilliant talent whose resistance to rules makes his hardworking teammates anxious.

The kid comes with motivated anger. His mother is supportive, but his father, a onetime drummer now working for NYC transit, has been absent. And so he clashes immediately with would-be father figures, including senior/drumline leader Sean (Leonard Roberts, Riley's stern paramilitary buddy on Buffy) and the band director, Dr. Lee (Orlando Jones). Sean believes in rudiments and rituals ("We are the pulse; without a pulse, you're dead"), and Lee not only believes in teamwork ("One band, one sound"), but also insists they play only what he considers "real" music, "Flight of the Bumblebee" rather than the latest Mystikal single. While Devon's gift has allowed him to get over for most of his life, at A&T he has to submit to the "tree-shaking" that ranks musicians and determines who is on the line for any given weekend.

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Scripted by Shawn Schepps and Tina Gordon Chism, Drumline follows a basic boy-learns-life-lessons plot, complete with familiar secondary characters: the wise and supportive dancer-girlfriend, Laila (Zo‘ Saldana, who appeared in the lamentable Crossroads); Jayson (GQ, from the lamentable On the Line), the Caucasian bass player who learns to "appreciate" his instrument after rhythmic instruction from Devon; the garrulous tuba player (Earl Poitier); the tough girl, Diedre (Candace Carey), who puts the boys to shame with her one-armed push-ups, but really just wants to go out with the frat boy; and said frat boy, Ernest (Jason Weaver).

Still, these foils serve their purpose; they make Devon look relatively complicated. Most importantly, he is the focus of the film's fierce, fun energy and -- no small thing -- first-rate drumming. (Cannon, star of a Nickelodeon series, reportedly learned some routines for the part, though much of Devon's work is done by a double, Jason Price.) Inspired in part by the high school experience of executive producer Dallas Austin (best known for producing hit records with TLC, Monica and Brandy, Boyz II Men, Madonna and Michael Jackson, among others), the movie loves the drumline. And its enthusiasm is hard to resist.

Drumline, Directed by Charles Stone III, A Fox releas, Opens Friday at Area theaters

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