Spike's second-best

Spike Lee should have followed up Do the Right Thing with this film instead of Mo’ Better Blues. It has all the best elements of Spike’s work -- a poignant mix of drama and comedy based on racial and social problems. Jungle Fever is almost just as brilliant because it takes a completely different approach, with a large ensemble cast tied together by an affair between a black man and a white woman, one of the few things that equally pisses off people of both races.

The main theory of Jungle Fever is that society has built up a taboo that leaves black men lusting after creamy white butt and white women curious about that dark chocolate, muscular skin. This tends to bug white guys and black women more than the rest, but Lee tells us there’s not a person alive who doesn’t have a little bit of contempt for interracial relationships. This makes things extremely hard on the practicioners of jungle fever, especially if their initials are O.J.

The two victims of the fever here are a hard-working architect (Wesley Snipes) and his new Italian secretary (Annabella Sciorra). Both have everything to lose -- Snipes is a happily-married family man and Sciorra lives with three racist family members -- but find themselves attracted to each other. If there’s one implausible thing about the film, it’s that Lee has them jump on each other way too soon, considering the consequences of the forbidden fruit.

Even at 132 minutes, the film moves at a fast pace. A lot of scenes were cut from the finished product and, after reading about a few of the missing scenes, I’m wondering if there’s some kind of 160-minute director’s cut floating around. It’s a rare movie that leaves me wanting more; that’s just how intriguing Lee has made Jungle Fever.

There’s one large subplot that is completely unrelated to the jungle love theme, featuring Samuel L. Jackson as Snipes’ estranged brother. He’s a good-for-nothing crackhead and his Bible-quoting father (Ossie Davis) wants nothing to do with him. The mother (Ruby Dee) is torn between them, and so is Snipes. Lee could have chopped this entire subplot out, but I’m glad he didn’t. Everything in the film is fascinating stuff and I’m sure the outtakes are too.

One thing the chopped scenes focused more on was Spike Lee’s character. In the finished film, he’s little more than a sounding board for Snipes, the best friend who tells him he’s in a lot of trouble messing around with a white girl. Scenes focusing on Lee’s troubles with his half-white girlfriend are missing, but Lee makes up for it by including the girlfriend in a scene that has Snipes’ wife and a group of other black women wondering how they can find a good man. They’re all just waiting to exhale, I bet.

Lee counters this group with a luncheonette full of white men (white meaning Italian here, as in Do the Right Thing) who are all pretty dark-skinned and nappy-headed on their own. The sole employee, and the only tolerant man in the bunch, is John Turturro, who as Sciorra’s former boyfriend, would seem to have more cause to hate the Snipes-Sciorra relationship. After seeing Turturro as the ultra-racist brother Pino in Do the Right Thing, it’s fun to see his school-boy crush on a smart, funny, pretty black woman.

Jungle Fever is my second-favorite Lee film, after Do the Right Thing. Like I said, they’re both a lot alike and feature the two best Spike Lee elements -- entertainment with meaning and original, stylish cinematics. It’s still depressing to me that we can’t just all get along, but it’s great to have a filmmaker that’s not afraid to bring these issues into mainstream entertainment and still make them entertaining. I’ve got a jungle fever of 103 now.