Slow Jam King

It’s hard out there for a pimp, but it’s even harder for JoJo (Domingo), a middle-class Filipino-American who adopts a fake mack persona to boost his confidence. While his attempts at becoming Gangsta No. 1 befuddle everybody around him, things really get complicated once JoJo carjacks a traveling salesman (Melton). With JoJo’s friend Devaun (Bowser), the group hits the open road and heads to Nashville. Identity crises abound in Steven E. Mallorca’s debut, thanks to the (mis)appropriation of black culture. But the film has little to say about today’s melting-pot messes past its premise, and its crude aesthetic seems more due to an amateurish grasp of the medium than a budget limitation. (Opens Fri; Imagin-Asian.)—David Fear