BURN THIS MESS
THE COOKOUT
[Zero stars]
Summer stinker. Running time: 85 minutes. Rated PG-13 (drug content, sexual references and language). At E-Walk, Kips Bay, Loews 84th Street, others.
‘SHE’S not the Patti LaBelle of pork – she’s the Coolio of canned meat,” says one obnoxious stereotype to another in the painfully unfunny festival of trash-talking, “The Cookout.”
It’s hard to believe Oscar nominee Queen Latifah (“Chicago”) had anything to do with this nasty, borderline bigoted, stunningly amateurish film, directed clunkily by first-timer Lance Rivera.
But there she is, not only credited with contributing to the screenplay (along with at least five others) but making an extended “special appearance” as a tough-talking, pratfalling security guard.
Someone called Storm P plays Todd Anderson, who’s in danger of losing his “family values” after signing a $30 million deal with his hometown team, the New Jersey Nets.
His gold-digging girlfriend (a squealy Meagan Good) talks him into spending money he doesn’t yet have, specifically on a 10-bathroom McMansion in an affluent, predominantly white gated community.
Farrah Fawcett plays a pastel-clad neighbor who, upon seeing Todd and Co. move in next door, screams to her snobby black husband (Danny Glover), “Honey, call security – I just saw some Negroes!”
Ha ha.
There’s not much going on plot-wise in “The Cookout.”
A bunch of friends and relatives – obese stoner cousins, a childhood pal (Eve), Todd’s disapproving mother (Jenifer Lewis), and an extortionist hood called Bling Bling (Ja Rule) – turn up at Todd’s house for a celebratory barbecue, endangering an endorsement deal he’s negotiating.
The result is a feeble mess, best forgotten by the marquee names caught up in it.

