Mark Reviews Movies: DON'T BE NICE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 19, 2019

When Don't Be Nice begins, it seems as if director Max Powers is simply going to take a traditional route. This is the world of slam poetry, although the film starts by framing that world in terms of competition. This is, after all, "the sport of the spoken word."

Poets perform on a stage in the East Village of Manhattan. Their poems are scored by judges. The whole process is to assemble the best of the best for a team, which will go on to perform in competitions. If the team succeeds in those, their journey will climax in Atlanta, where the slam poetry national competition is held.

Powers seems to be heading toward such an approach, in which the team will practice, their poems will be performed and judged, and the tension will come from whether or not they can win the big event. Then, life throws a most-welcome wrench into the proceedings with the introduction of Lauren Whitehead, one of the two coaches of the Bowery Poetry Club's team.

She doesn't directly say as much, although the point is clear: She believes slam poetry has become stale. Whitehead doesn't want members of the team simply to coast on poems about topical political issues, which the audience expects and, because such poems are what they've been told and have come to expect, loves. The poets for the team have to go deeper if they're going to write and perform truthful pieces—pieces that not only raise relevant points about culture and society, but also delve into their personal experiences.

With this philosophy on the writing and performance process, the film transforms into something much more compelling than a documentary that tries to frame slam as a sport. It observes how some members of the team embrace the idea of incorporating their lived experiences, how some push back because the process is too painful, and how they grow as artists because they're willing to confront the notion in the first place.

We get to know a few of these poets to a more intimate degree, through their struggles to write honest poetry and through the poetry itself. Don't Be Nice inevitably returns to the competition side of the enterprise, but by that point, we're actually invested in these poets as artists trying to make sense of themselves and the world, not just as competitors trying to win.

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