Review of Hot Potato (1976) by Alexandre C — 05 Jan 2011

I'm generally extremely kind and understanding when I rate and review movies. Very rarely do I ever give out a rating this low. This time, I just could't hold back. Even for a low-budget, cheesy exploitation picture, this is just pure dog shit. It's more martial arts than blaxploitation (which I'm okay with). However, I was led to believe there would be some crossover as this was apparently supposed to be a sequel of sorts to Black Belt Jones. However, the only things linking the two are Jim Kelly and Oscar Williams. They don't even call Kelly's character Black Belt Jones...they just call him Jones.

Anyway, this movie, unless you read into it, can't be blaxploitation since Kelly is a token here. You could read into it and say that because he is a token it is exploitative, but I refuse to do that as this film ain't worth reading into or analyzing. The writing and direction are crap, the performances are terrible (even Kelly is just okay), Rhino is an annoying and obnoxious character, and this film is just plain boring. Maybe a couple of the action scenes are mildly okay, but the majority of this film is retarded, inept, and just awful.

The DVD cover makes it seem like it will be some sort of cool Indiana Jones type of film. I would actually have enjoyed that, as that would have been cool (had it been done right, that is). This is just crap. They even rip off paets of the James Bond theme in what I believe was an attempt to be cool and reerential. It just comes off as stupid and pointless...like the rest of the film.

Even one moment where they make a funny reference/joke to Tom Jones (which I liked) is ruined by the fact that they take it too far and it becomes overbearing, offensive, and dull. Avoid this one. It gives genre pictures a bad name.