Some movies go off faster than dodgy fish dinners. They look great on the slab, and taste great off the plate, but if you come back for seconds a day later they stink something rotten. One such movie was Boyz N The Hood. Arriving on the heels of Spike Lee's first successes, John Singleton's feature debut was embraced, just a little too early, as proof that a generation of talented black directors was waiting in the wings to transform Hollywood. This was true enough, except that Singleton never turned out to be one of them, and Boyz fell apart on second viewing. Meanwhile, the Boyz themselves have enjoyed varied destinies. Ice Cube has established himself as a successful writer-director of African-American film franchises, and Larry Fishburne has been Morpheus and Ike Turner and Othello.
Which leaves Cuba Gooding Jr, and one sad question: what the hell happened? Any rough edges Gooding exhibited in Boyz were shorn off in very short order. It took five years for him to find a role as memorable, in Cameron Crowe's otherwise hollow and fraudulent Jerry Maguire. And all it meant was that Gooding would forever be remembered for howling "Show me the money!"
Gooding has two modes: one is as the lone black player in empty big-star vehicles like Maguire, Outbreak, As Good As It Gets and A Few Good Men; the other is, it now seems, as the black Steve Guttenberg, a fool, a synonym for a complete lack of seriousness or commitment. His latest projects describe an inexorable downward spiral. In Snow Dogs he mugged it up for the under-nines, and was outshone by his canine co-stars; in Boat Trip he made a waterborne La Cage Aux Folles; In The Fighting Temptations (pictured) he snuggles up to Beyoncé (and talking of fighting temptation...), while in current US hit Radio he plays a lovably mentally challenged character.
The dreaded spectre of Eddie Murphy looms large over Gooding's career: undoubted talent combined with no taste whatsoever, plus a desperate desire to be loved. It didn't work for Sammy Davis Jr either (well, it did, but at what a psychic cost!), and it ain't working for Cuba, who needs to kick our current image of him down the stairs, and start to rebuild from the ground up.
Career high Apart from Boyz, Men Of Honour. Unfortunately he had to face off against De Niro, whose character is like Popeye reimagined by Hitler.
Career low Every single minute of the last six movies he's made.
Need to know Cuba Sr, his dad, was lead singer of The Main Ingredient, famed for soul classic Everybody Plays The Fool, which Cuba has evidently never really listened to properly.
The last word On his Oscar acceptance speech for Jerry Maguire: "I know I kind of lost my mind a little bit. I apologize for that. That night went so fast; I can't remember what I said or what happened."
