Orlando Jones in "Drumline"

Saw "Drumline" recently and enjoyed it for what it was. Not a Great Film, but certainly well made and did what it wanted to do pretty well. However, Orlando Jones quietly turned in his best performance and nobody seemed to notice. I thought he was just fucking great in "Drumline," more confident than his silly turn in "Evolution" and actually showing some range and dramatic ability. He had a character arc, not some silly one-dimensional side player that was just there to tell jokes. Yes, he's still a supporting character in "Drumline," but a pretty damn good one. For recent "teacher/coach with a heart of gold" movies, his performance rang more real than Quaid in "The Rookie," Denzel in "Remember the Titans," or George Lopez in "Real Women Have Curves."

Good on Jones and I wouldn't be too surprised if "Drumline" moves him up the food chain a little bit. It's a perf like this that'll get him noticed in the right places and he just might surprise people some year with a major award-y type perf in something if anybody handed him that kind of script.

No, I'm not saying that you guys should rush out and see "Drumline," but if you were wondering if it was good or not, it is and yeah, you might dig on it.

And yes, I am aware of his also quite good turn in "Liberty Heights," but you have to admit, that was an extremely minor role there.

Actually, I found that the movie worked best in the smaller face-off's between two drumlines because it was very hard for them to capture the full, expansive sound of a marching band in a stadium - in a theater. The music was never wide or broad enough and always sounded like it was canned instead of being blasted all over the place (I was a "Marchin' Bearkat" at Klein High School in the early '90s, so I know of what I speak and this didn't sound like what a real marching band can sound like). The drum stuff was absolutely fucking phenomenal, however, compared to the band stuff so if you're into precision drumming, yeah, it's well worth it.