In a nutshell, a storyline can definitely be good without the main character being a likeable person. Many of the movies and television series that I’ve watched over the years have lacked a likeable main character, and sometimes I’ve even found myself rooting for the bad guy. Case in point, my favorite character in the movie Heat was Robert De Niro, and I sincerely hoped that he would’ve gotten away with robbing the bank and lived happily ever after with his girlfriend. Unfortunately, he didn’t escape and was shot to death by Al Pacino in the end.
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Cuba Gooding Jr. |
One of my all-time favorite movies from the 90s was Boyz N The Hood. The main character in the movie was Tre Styles played by Cuba Gooding Jr., and many would say that he was a likeable guy on the surface―he was a good student, he was a good friend to Ricky Baker played by Morris Chestnut, he had a part-time job at the mall after school, and he had a great relationship with his father played by Laurence Fishburne. However, he wasn’t all that great of a guy as a protagonist in my humble opinion even though he had some good qualities. For starters, he did what a typical teenager would do which was to pressure his girlfriend Brandi, played by Nia Long, for sex and tried the manipulation tactic of the silent treatment to get her to cave in. Lastly, a small detail that I overlooked the first couple of times I watched the movie was when Tre and Ricky went to the grocery store to get some cornmeal, and a beggar asked Tre if he had any money. Tre curtly answered no, and in the very next scene, he disrespectfully threw some loose change at the guy who asked him for money initially.
The fact that Tre was an asshole to that beggar didn’t take anything away from the storyline because it was a true-to-life situation that happens every day. Furthermore, it wasn’t mandatory for the main character of a movie like Boyz N The Hood to be a good guy, but fans can still appreciate that Tre was a real person with flaws.
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