If there was any sort of specific cultural commentary being levied on a portion of the American population by Mo Better Blues, it probably dealt with black musicians. With that, though, came the almost unavoidable clichés that trail behind commenting on the life of an artist.

Denzel Washington’s Bleek Gilliam leads a successful band – one indebted to the bop sounds of the forties and fifties. Accompanied by Shadow, as played by Wesley Snipes, Gilliam’s band is in the middle of a long engagement at the aforementioned club managed by the Flatbush brothers. So far, nothing seems trite.

But heading home and watching Gilliam conduct his personal life, which is generally overrun by his time practicing trumpet, becomes a trial. He’s involved with two different one – the obvious good girl/bad girl dichotomy. Playing into that is Indigo, played by Joie Lee, being an elementary school teacher. As long as Lee was contriving these character’s to fit his whim, wouldn’t it have been a far sight more interesting if she was an ER doctor or something else that more immediately affects the world. Certainly school teachers are underpaid, overlooked and marginalized, but since we’re looking at this fictitious world, he may as well have made her something as dreamy as a musician.

Anyway, Gilliam continues to string along these women while his manager, Giant (Lee) goes through his gambling subplot. This here rates a bit lower on the triteness scale, but during the nineties was jazz still so inextricably linked to the underworld that Giant needed to have his fingers – and eventually other things – broken because of a gambling debt? Probably not. Apart form that, though, Lee’s character pushes contradiction to the limit by mouthing off to whoever, but not following through – specifically to Snipes’ Shadow.

The film’s ending might not count as clichéd, but it unquestioningly counts as stylized by Hollywood. After watching Giant get beat up, catching a beating himself and failing to revitalize his career, Gilliam runs to Inidgo, professes his love, gets married and has a baby in the space of about eight minutes.

Mo Better Blues finding its summation in such an easy development looks like shoddy script writing. But the final scene of the film finds Gilliam’s sun running scales just as he did when a child. Even that scenario might be problematic to some. Those dissenters should be quelled by the chorus of children screaming for Gilliam’s son to come out to play, mirroring the opening of the film. It’s not a brilliant conclusion, but one well suited for such an effort.