‘Please Forgive Me’ is not worth your time

6:32 PMDrake’s acting range keeps staying the same, but his short films keep getting longer. His latest foray into the “Aubrey saves woman from a band of goons” genre is a 20-plus minute oeuvre directed and written by Anthony Mandler titled Please Forgive Me. It’s shot beautifully, but the story is weak, the dialogue is even worse and ultimately you feel like the 6 God is trying to angle his way into a role in Bad Boys For Life.

This started back in 2010, when the Find Your Love video dropped. Also directed by Mandler, it featured a storyline that had the artist pursuing a girl dating a gang leader. The premise didn’t exactly make everyone in Jamaica (where it was shot) happy. Officials thought it portrayed their country in an overly negative light. People took it with a grain of salt and made a bunch of jokes about how “Wheelchair Jimmy,” his character for so many years on Degrassi, had finally grown up.

In 2013, it was Hold On, We’re Going Home that kept up this character of Drake being the sensitive lover who has no choice but to dabble in the thug world to meet the good girl — more on that later — he must save. That time it was set in 1980s-era Miami. It was a lengthier departure from the previous storyline although the theme was similar. There were cameos galore and we got to see Drake talking on a rotary phone. On the “did we need this scale,” it clocked in at unnecessary.

Now that it’s 2016, we’ve evolved to not only Apple Music, where it was released, but also a multisong soundtrack. There’s even a performance at one point. The plot is somewhere between Indecent Proposal and Belly, with a random photo shoot in the middle for Belgian model Fanny Neguesha. It’s sexy and serious and all the other things that a good vanity project needs to be.

It’s just not very good. There are long pregnant pauses in the acting, a bunch of lengthy panning shots of the star. Then we’re back to the squad in all-black, and this time Drake’s gun game is a little stronger. But again, what is with this persona? Back before he fully went nuts on the rap game and was just a kid on a show in Toronto living with his mom, he rapped this:

I been a mess since every girl I left went
and a got a new man but I’m the new version of Fresh Prince
and the beds got bunked for real, I switch wifeys every season like Uncle Phil

If he genuinely wants to reignite his acting career and take a career path along the lines of Will Smith, it’s probably time to get himself a part in a real flick — not just play parts in his own videos that emulate fantasies he’s had since that old basement apartment. He’s better than this.