Prince of Broadway is a pretty typical story that I've seen at least a few times before. In this case Lucky is an illegal immigrant from Ghana living in New York City and hustling fake sneakers and handbags in the Garment District. One day a woman shows up while he's working on the street and gives him a young boy (maybe 2 years old) and says he's the kid's father.
Lucky doesn't believe it and can't figure out what to do with the kid. On top of all the problems of taking care of the baby, he is worried about how this will get in the way of him selling his merch. He bitches about his situation to anyone who will listen to him - basically bitching for most of the film about how much his life sucks. Lucky tries to get his girlfriend ho help him, but she leaves him when he can't get his act in gear fast enough. He is forced to grow up quickly and learn to be a father overnight.
In the mid 1980s, this same basic story was called 3 Men and a Cradle or 3 Men and a Baby. (OK, those were about three men, not just one, but in the big view they are the same story.) In the 1990s it was called Big Daddy; now it's called Prince of Broadway. I guess the original twist this time is that it's about a poor illegal immigrant guy rather than the other films about more established white guys. But Lucky's illegal-ness is not really what this movie is about. Yes he says he can't go to the police with the kid because they'll arrest him for his status, but the movie is really about how the kid helps Lucky grow up - the same way Adam Sandler, Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson and Tom Selleck (and those three French guys) were forced to grow up in their movies because of their kids.
What makes this movie especially frustrating is how much time Lucky spends complaining about the baby and how little time he spends actually engaging with him. He pushes the kid around in a stroller for a few months before giving it a name (when he gets the kid from the mother he doesn't know his name). One day well into their time together he starts calling the child Prince and decides he likes him. We don't really see the growth from disliking him to loving him - it's much more binary than that.
Director and co-writer Sean Baker uses a rather effective hand-held camera for most of the shooting here, putting us directly inside the back rooms where Lucky sells his fake goods. This is a nice touch, but doesn't fix the larger problems with the script that are still here. Ultimately this is a pretty trite story that spends too much time covering recycled material rather than examining the world of New York's illegal immigrants, which would have made for a much more interesting story.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
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