/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24801477/TCT_20201212_03096_R2.jpeg "Review: They Cloned Tyrone on Netflix – A Contemporary Classic of Blaxploitation")
More than anything else, They Cloned Tyrone — Netflix’s new conspiracy theory-minded, sci-fi comedy thriller from director Juel Taylor — wants to make you laugh with its wild story about a secret organization terrorizing an unsuspecting Black neighborhood from the shadows. But the movie also wants you thinking about what it is you’re laughing at, exactly — its absurdity, its jokes, or the hard realities behind the fantastical horror playing out on-screen.
Set almost entirely in an economically depressed but vibrant Black neighborhood somewhere in America, They Cloned Tyrone tells the tale of how dope dealer Fontaine (John Boyega) accidentally discovers an alarming truth about the place he’s called home for his entire life. As a local from the Glen — the small chunk of town where Fontaine pushes his products while trying to edge out competitors like Isaac (J. Alphonse Nicholson) — there’s little about his stomping grounds that he isn’t intimately familiar with.
Fontaine knows exactly where Isaac’s corner boys are usually posted up, just like he knows that he can always rely on Biddy (Tamberla Perry) and the Glen’s other sex workers to cough up information about where people are for the right price. Fontaine also knows that people like himself and Isaac — men who conduct their business violently and with little consideration for the hardships other people are dealing with — are part of what makes the Glen a dangerous place for kids like Junebug (Trayce Malachi) to grow up in.
But between Fontaine tragically losing his younger brother, financially supporting his shut-in mother, and having few other viable options at his disposal, it makes far more sense from his perspective to make a living selling drugs to cash-strapped pimps like Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) than trying to work a 9-to-5.
Image: Parrish Lewis / Netflix
Though They Cloned Tyrone’s reality becomes exponentially more heightened and outlandish as the movie unfolds, Boyega brings