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Carl Black (played by Mike Epps) is a Chicago cable installer who steals a huge sum of money and a stash of marijuana from a gangster, then moves with his family to a mansion in Beverly Hills. His new wife Lorena (Zulay Henao) is struggling to bond with her stepchildren, Allie (Webb) and Carl Jr (Alex Henderson), who for unknown reasons go by Carl’s Jr, like the fast-food chain. It sounds like something that happened on-set and everyone just decided to go with it, my hunch is that they came onto the set with about nine pages of a script and assumed they would figure the rest out as they filmed.
There’s also Carl’s ex-con cousin Cronut (Lil Duval) and George Lopez as President El Bama in one of the most absurd scenes ever. When the sirens for the Purge (a twelve-hour period in which all law is suspended and people can kill or do whatever else they wish) commence, several guests including Charlie Murphy and Mike Tyson (!!) arrive.
There is absolutely no internal logic. It is unclear if Carl Black had any prior knowledge of the Purge. He definitely seems to not grasp it because he is anxious to the point of panic about being apprehended when he starts offing his attackers. (The first victim, his daughter’s boyfriend, is game of Vine star King Bach with a prominent decomp) Meet the Blacks is no dumber than The Purge, but when the white neighbors begin to encircle the house there is a whiff of satire about racism and message-driven housing estates. Also, there is the quite funny moment when a white man decides that mid-sentence he is able to list of terrible stereotypes but suddenly clocks that he has crossed a line after using the N-word and begs for forgiveness but only for that.
At last, the entire Blacks family unites to face and fight their challenges together. Even Allie has started to understand that her stepmother, who for reasons unknown undresses partially to a tank top in one scene, means well. Holding back tears, Allie looks her mother straight in the eyes and with much shame confesses to her, “I thought you were a ho!” before embracing her. Webb’s delivery is so good that this is funny when it shouldn’t be. Let’s hope we see this family again in something that does not feel like a staged production.
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