This is it, time is nigh: Geremy Jasper‘s Patti Cakes opens three days hence, or the evening of Thursday, 8.17. There’s no way this film is a letdown or shortfaller, and yet so far 40% of the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic responses have been thumbs down. Why? Because it’s a familiar underdog-tryin’-to-make-it tale, and injected with the same kind of formulaic uplift enzymes that went into Rocky, Hustle & Flow and 8 Mile. But it doesn’t matter because the spirit is there, and because the culture needs one of these films every so often so why bitch about it? And because Danielle McDonald (i.e. Jumbo) is the shit.

Posted on 8.6: And I will surrender myself to the New Jersey-ness of it, as I was born and raised and suffered through years of adolescent angst in Westfield, New Jersey. Westfield was and is a comfy whitebread hamlet while Patti Cake$ is set in the grim streets of Bergen County — a far cry. But I lived in North Bergen in ’08 and ’09 and suffered once again due to the grotesque antics of the Hispanic Party Elephant, who lived one floor above. I don’t hate New Jersey but it has always brought me some kind of pain or lethargy or discomfort. I’ll never be at peace with it, but I shouldn’t blame Patti Cake$ for this. And I don’t.”