. . . which is par for the course for films which Hollywood is trying to market to the "urban" crowd. Anything which has to do with genitalia and poop is thrown into previews for flicks with minority-predominant casts (which means if a movie such as PEEPLES has 125 seconds of such material in its 94 minute, 45.13-second running time, and the studio wants a trailer running two minutes, then the producer honchos have to edit five seconds of what they consider "visual bait" out of the preview). What you do not really get a sense of from the "blaxploitation" trailer put out there for PEEPLES is that this feature is mostly about the greatest novel in American literature, MOBY DICK. Protagonist or main character Wade Walker (played by Craig Robinson) is an ordinary boy from south Detroit or Brooklyn who fixes his harpoon sights on a prize catch named Grace Peeples (Kerry Washington). Writer\Director Tina Gordon Chism makes it crystal clear that "Wade" is her Capt. Ahab, with Grace standing in for the white whale, by placing the action in a Connecticut community which still has Herman Melville\Moby Dick Days every summer (featuring Grace's dad, Judge Peeples, as Ahab, in a kind of "icky" flirtation with incest). All in all, this is the best reinterpretation of Melville done in the 2000s so far (but, as they say, the century is still young).
