They Cloned Tyrone
Director: Juel Taylor
Writer: Tony Rettenmaier, Juel Taylor
Cast: John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, Teyonah Parris, Kiefer Sutherland, David Alan Grier, J. Alphonse Nicholson, Tamberla Perry
Seen on: 14./15.1.2026

Content Note: (critical treatment of) racism

Plot:
Fontaine (John Boyega) is somebody in his hood. He deals drugs, he commands respect but he does have a feud with Isaac (J. Alphonse Nicholson) who wants to take over. When their dispute comes to a head just after Fontaine visited pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) looking for the money he owes him, Fontaine is shot. Dead. So, how come, he just gets up the next morning? Fontaine will not let it rest, and he ropes Slick Charles as well as his best girl Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) in to figure it out. What they discover is so much bigger than they thought.

They Cloned Tyrone is pulpy fun with a political message, a movie in the veins of Sorry to Bother You: somewhat overblown and unhinged, but also much truer than you’d think at first glance.

I had heard good things about They Cloned Tyrone, but surprisingly little given the film’s cast. In that sense, too, it is like Sorry to Bother You, and it’s hard not to suspect at least a modicum of racism in executive decision making to keep the film so silent (I bet it’s more than just a modicum, though). The film certainly deserves more.

At first, it looks like less of an hommage to Blaxploitation than a straight-up re-enactment of the very worst of stereotypical portrayals of Black folks in film. Our leads here – the stoic drug-dealer with a harsh past, the wisecracking sex worker and the unreliable pimp – seem like characters that come from the whitest of writer who can’t imagine Black people differently. But that is only the start, though – and the film is quick to make more of its characters and imbue the tropes with a sinister undertone.

That works perfectly because Boyega, Foxx and Parris work perfectly. They are funny, they get emotional in the right moments, they know when to ham it up and when to dial it back a notch. They just click together and it is great to see. Would I have minded if there had been more than one woman of note in the film? Absolutely not. But at least, this central threesome really delivers.

And what it delivers is a stylishly shot film that isn’t quite as out there as it appears at first. There is a very serious – and very true – thread of criticism that runs through the entire film. The things that we see here have happen(ed) to Black people in the USA (and elsewhere too, probably), only in a less outspoken way. That they are now able to make funny films about it speaks to the utter resilience they have.

Summarizing: great entertainment.