Throw Back Films: House Party

Published on March 12th, 2010
Written by Swiff Epics

In this weekly segment I will be talking about classic movies that you should all go back and watch, whether you’ve seen them before or not.

I am going to start with the Kid n Play urban classic, House Party (all three).

This 1990′s flick was a real hit with black people back in the day. I remember being around 5 or 6 at the time I first saw it with my older brother. I used to always sneak watch this film because if my mother caught me watching it she would turn it off due to the foul language. This was also the first movie I remember seeing Martin Lawrence in. I watched House Party 1 and 2 so much that I damn near knew the whole film’s dialog word for word.

This is a great movie to go back and watch now. It will bring you back to your child hood, as well as make you realize that some of these old films completely shit on the new ones (as far as urban cinema goes). It’s funny to think that this film was originally written for DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince (Will Smith). I think they would have been too squeaky clean for this film, it may have damaged Will Smith’s Fresh Prince stardom. Kid n Play fit the bill perfectly, and I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

As far as House Party 3 goes, that shit was pretty bad. When you try and recreate a classic too many times it gets stale very quickly, and that is what happened. House Party 3 however did feature some of the newer black actors of that time, such as Bernie Mac and Chris Tucker.

I recommend this film to anyone else who was a young buck back in the early 1990′s and thus have memories of how much this film got passed around between friends. If you were perhaps born in the mid or late 90′s then you may have missed out on this urban classic, if you fit into this category then you shouldn’t hesitate to break your House Party virginity.