Pity the children who don’t know
Airplane! Date Movie, the new kind of not-really-a-parody, is more
what the kids are used to, with its ew! quotient high, its laughs
few, and its ingenuity nowhere to be found. Directors-writers Jason
Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (first-time helmers, scripters of the
Scary Movie franchise) begin the crassness with Julia Jones (a
fat-suited Alyson Hannigan) awaking from a nightmare that involves
Napoleon Dynamite (Josh Myers, wearing a “Don’t Vote for Pedro
t-shirt). The movie then roughly follows a plot line based on My Big
Fat Greek Wedding, Hitch, and both Meet the Parents and Meet the
Fockers. (TV programs, however, aren’t excluded, as Hitch (Tony Cox)
sends Julia to be “pimped out.”) Romance soon comes, of course,
in the form of a Hugh Grant[EN DASH]ish character named Grant
Fonckyerdoder (Adam Campbell). Sight gags such as the popping of
giant whiteheads and a gassy toilet-trained cat are typical of Date
Movie’s lowlights. Another flaw is the filmmakers’ decision to quote
from movies way *past* the past few years: When Harry Met Sally, What
Women Want, and Notting Hill will likely go unrecognized by the
tweens who are sure to dominate the ticketbuyers. Even if the
audience members do get every reference, that’s all most of the
“jokes” are  –  nearly to-the-letter regurgitations of scenes
from each movie to make you think, “Hey, I remember that one!”
rather than adding any satire to instead make you, well, laugh.

Date Movie isn’t a complete disaster,
however middling its achievements might be. Campbell successfully
takes one of the few funny scenes in Mr. & Mrs. Smith a step
further, and film conventions such as sexy slow-motion and
disembodied voices reciting words on a page are worthy targets.
Hannigan, somehow, manages to retain her sweetness and even dignity
throughout. Jennifer Coolidge, too, not only is made up to be the
mirror image of Barbra Streisand’s Meet the Fockers character, she’s
got the mannerisms and voice down pat. The funniest person here,
though, is Eddie Griffin, who plays Julia’s traditional dad: Even
when his lines aren’t hilarious, Griffin gets the most of them with
inspired timing and inflection, all while beaming his perfect pearly
whites. When his well-mannered character at one point warns Grant
that if he mistreats Julia, he’ll “bust yo head with a pipe,” the
threat  itself is the best part of the movie.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

The truest event an audience member
will see in Disney’s Eight Below is this: Even dogs have more
acting ability and general appeal than Paul Walker. The latest movie
to be “inspired by true events” is actually inspired by a
decidedly less yay! 1983 film that got to the real-life tale first.
Eight Below, a remake of Japan’s Nankyoku monogatari (known in the
U.S. as Antarctica), toots that it’s telling “The Most Amazing
Story of Survival, Friendship, and Adventure Ever Told” about a
South Pole research team who’s forced to leave behind their eight
highly trained sled huskies when a storm is coming and the airplane’s
at full capacity. They think they’ll be able to come right back for
the dogs. They’re wrong, and end up making the return trip some six
months later.

Eight Below does actually end up being
pretty amazing — you’ll marvel mostly at the dogs themselves, but
also be astonished that Mr. 2 Fast 2 Furious continues to get lead
roles. Here Walker once again walks through (groan if you must) his
role as Gerry, an  Antarctic “survival guide.” Against his
better, blue-eyed judgment, Gerry obeys an order to escort a
scientist, Davis McClaren (Bruce Greenwood, who matches Walker in
blandness), on a trip whose secret destination is twice as far as the
one Gerry already planned for. The stability of the ice is uncertain,
McClaren’s packed a ton of crap, and even if they take the dogs
instead of a heavier, speedier mode of transportation, the trip is
one Big Risk.

But the dogs — all named and, at
first, seemingly indistinguishable — “absolutely love their work,”
according to their master, and though screenwriter Dave Digilio laces
the expedition with the expected gasp-inducing moments, the two make
it back battered but still breathing. The success of the mission is
in no small part due to the dogs, yet they are tightly chained and
left behind when the crew (who also include Jason Biggs as a goofy
cartographer and Moon Bloodgood as pilot and love-interest Katie)
have to get out of the impending storm’s way.

Disney is promoting Eight Below as
another animal adventure for the kiddies, but this love story between
a man and his dogs is hardly Snow Dogs 2. Trying to ride on the
popularity of a certain documentary from last year, director Frank
Marshall (who hasn’t done anything since 1995’s Congo) throws in
a cute penguin scene right at the beginning, and the movie does echo
March of the Penguins’ theme of the remarkable instincts of very
adorable animals. But the running time, at two often slow-moving
hours, isn’t very family friendly. Nor are Eight Below’s graphic
depiction of near-death experiences, serious hypothermia, and vicious
predators — one scare, in fact, well into the movie’s nearly
silent whiteness, is so unexpected it’s  sure to make even the
grown-ups jump. And if parents want to teach their children that
sometimes dogs eat seagulls and dead whales instead of Kibbles ‘n
Bits for dinner, well, this is the film to take them to.

Marshall makes Gerry and McClaren’s
trip quick-moving and riveting, but you may as well tune out when the
movie starts cutting back and forth between the humans, safely back
in America, and the dogs, left to fend for themselves in increasingly
perilous conditions. It’s the actors, not necessarily Digilio’s
story line, that make life on this continent a snooze: Walker uses
his one expression to obsess over being forced to abandon his best
friends, Biggs only appears at the film’s beginning and end and is
annoying in both, and Bloodgood does little but smile like a lobotomy
patient. Competing against this, it’s little wonder the huskies’
distinctions soon become clear.

At the same time, the dogs’
performances, as silly as it may sound, are unbelievable — the
eldest noticeably withers, the leader tries to rouse the tired and
comforts the injured, and the newest member of the team, though kinda
dopey-looking, ends up being the most calculating. The dogs react to
each other as well as anything new that shows up in their blank
habitat (which is actually Canada and Greenland), and though
considerable editing is surely involved, it’s all seamless. You may
start snoozing again during the research teams’ unnecessarily
protracted return trip, but it’s worth it just to see the reaction
of the pups, who along with their trainers are fully responsible for
making Eight Below nearly live up to its tagline.

Freedomland, meanwhile, is easily the
most bizarrely melodramatic story ever told. Admittedly, the story –
adapted by Richard Price from his own novel — is rife with tension
and tragedy, with its overlapping elements of a racially fueled
powder-keg neighborhood, a child unintentionally kidnapped during an
alleged carjacking, and a mother made crazy with shock and grief. In
the end, though, its much and often absurd ado goes nowhere and
amounts to nothing.

Directed by Joe Roth — whose last
project was, unsurprisingly, 2004’s wackee Christmas with the
Kranks — Freedomland pairs the usually reliable Samuel L. Jackson
and Julianne Moore (who, considering her turn in 2004’s similarly
themed (but way worse) The Forgotten, seems to be following up her
depressed-’50s-housewife run with a mother-who-might-be-nuts
series). Roth emphasizes in the opening credits that this film is
going to be urban-tough: Accompanied by a thumping beat, scenes of
kids playing basketball at night, steam coming out of a grate, and
the silhouette of a tomcat (?) fade over each other. A group of women
with candles parades down a street. And most important, Brenda
(Moore) is walking around in a disheveled daze, eventually making her
way to a hospital and leaving a bloody handprint when she opens the
ER’s door.

At the same time, Lt. Lorenzo Council
(Jackson) is on patrol, chatting easily with the residents of a
housing project in the almost exclusively black Dempsey, N.J.
Lorenzo’s goal of trying to find and talk some sense into a kid who
missed a hearing for a minor marijuana charge is interrupted when
he’s asked to take Brenda’s carjacking case. He’s initially
gentle, coaxing a few random details out of her while both of her
hands are bandaged and she’s quite distressed. Until, that is, she
finally stammers that her 4-year-old son was in the car. Then,
naturally, he flips out and starts yelling questions at the sobbing
mom, even pushing a guy who attempts to walk into the room they’re
in. He pursues the case furiously, but with Brenda unwilling to give
up more details and acting erratically — such as slapping her hands
on her forehead or against a wall — Lorenzo quickly reckons that the
white girl ain’t right.

This isn’t the only instance of
Freedomland’s histrionics and going-nowhere plot points. You might
think that Lorenzo’s exaggerated response and dedication may relate
to something in his past — wrong. Brenda has a brother on the force,
Danny (Ron Eldard), who also yells at her, asking her if she’s back
on crack (aha…maybe). He pleads for the return of her son on TV,
beats the crap out of an innocent man –  and then disappears for the
rest of the movie. And because Brenda said the crime took place in
Dempsey, where she works, and not Gannon, the predominantly Caucasian
neighborhood where she lives, the residents of the housing complex
are put on complete lockdown. Not for the night, but a few days,
which one man points out never before happened even for the multiple
homicides that occurred in his building. With the Gannon police
taking over, the not-quite-believable situation inevitably escalates
into a riot.

Within Freedomland — named after an
abandoned children’s asylum known for abuse — lies a gripping
story, snippets of which the cast does justice to. The mystery of a
clearly fucked-up Brenda and her missing child remains a question
until the end, and the treatment of black-on-black versus
black-on-white crime is thought-provoking.
And when the search for Brenda’s kid is aided by a volunteer group
devoted to finding missing children (that candlelit parade at the
film’s beginning), the movie is at its best: The time and
dedication needed for a thorough search is demonstrated during a
stomach-sinking scene on Freedomland’s property, and Edie Falco, no
longer Soprano-glam, delivers a fantastic performance as the subtly
intense, shrewd, and heartbroken leader of the volunteers who gets
crucial information out of Brenda.

Moore, meanwhile, matches Jackson and
Eldard in their overreaching acting, fading in and out of a Jersey
accent and making her loon/white trash character more laughable than
sympathetic. But in addition to the outsize performances, Price’s
script is loaded with speechifying and treacle. Unlike his 1995
screenplay adaptation, Clockers, the wrap-up of this story leaves
subplots unaddressed and details that are highly unbelievable. A key
to Freedomland’s mystery is a statement that can also serve as
critique: “If you go, you’ll be sorry.”

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Black Baltimore teens can end up at one of allegedly only three paths by the time they’re 18: Get an orange jumpsuit with bracelets. Or a brown suit with a brown box. Or a gown, which comes with the nicer accessory of a high-school diploma. At least that’s what the recruiter for a two-year educational program in Africa says to potential students in The Boys of Baraka, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s documentary about at-risk youth.

According to the film, 76 percent of Baltimore’s black males don’t graduate high school. In 1996, the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation, a group dedicated to aiding Maryland’s disenfranchised, founded the Baraka School, which selects 20 local seventh- and eighth-graders with the bleakest futures to study in rural Kenya without the distractions of drugs, violence, and broken homes. The Boys of Baraka focuses on four of these students — Devon, Montrey, and brothers Richard and Romesh — as they say a temporary goodbye to inner-city life, marvel over their first passports, and then discover that their free trip doesn’t mean a free ride: “This school is very strict…God!” Richard says. Regular exercise, too, is part of the curriculum.

Ewing and Grady interlace footage of the kids’ home life (both before they leave and while they’re away) with their experiences in Kenya. Most of the boys have a startlingly positive attitude about bettering their education. Montrey is shown visiting his father in jail, telling him, “I’m going there so when I grow up, I’m going to be somebody.” Devon is taken care of by his grandmother because his mom’s an addict and often in prison, yet he says he accepts that “life will never be fair” and aspires to be a preacher. Richard insists that he’s too smart and too strong to let “them” — the addicts all over his neighborhood — “get in here,” as he points to his head. 

In unsurprising reality-TV style, Ewing and Grady present the school as a magic bullet with a few asterisks. The kids prone to fighting still do, but instead of getting suspended they are separated from the group and forced to figure out how to erect a tent together. The students’ grades go up, but excepting a couple of in-class scenes, the mechanics of their academic progress is a mystery. The background of the teachers and administrators–who are almost exclusively white Americans — isn’t revealed. (Nor, for that matter, are the school’s origins or funding, which was found by further research.) Instead, the film shows the boys checking out hedgehogs and lizards. Or playing soccer. Or being rewarded with a trip up Mount Kenya to celebrate the completion of their first year. They sure seem happy!

Regardless of how heartening the attitudes of the chosen students and the program itself seem to be, the directors never rise above this tone of condescension. Subtitles are often used when the kids are interviewed — and not because they’re talking quietly. And when the boys return home for a two-month summer vacation, disaster apparently strikes. The school’s shut down because of political unrest, and judging by the reactions captured by the guardians and the kids, this is tantamount to a death sentence: Forget about how they’ve been affected by that first year. Without the nice white folks who’ve magically brought them this far, the boys are as good as doomed.

Naturally, Ewing and Grady stick the camera in the kids’ faces as they brood over the situation, perhaps a little too analytically, not to mention dramatically: As Richard and Romesh hang out at a burnt playground, Romesh, the younger brother, insists that one year isn’t enough to help them  and wonders why such a program can’t be set up in Baltimore. And with his head hanging low, Romesh then declares what the film seems desperate to prove: “I think all our lives are gonna be bad now.”

Firewall, to be blunt, makes The Boys of Baraka look like Oscar material. Directed with  maximum cliche by Richard Loncraine — the man responsible for 2004’s Wimbledon — and terribly written by Joe Forte, Firewall is an old-school, over-the-top thriller updated for the 21st century. For instance, the story involves the standby house by the lake and lines such as “I want to know what you want, and I want to know NOW!” But it also includes embezzlement by iPod and a dog that comes equipped with GPS.

If anything good must be said about Firewall, it’s that the movie proves Harrison Ford   really does still have a little Indiana Jones in him. Ford plays Jack Stanfield, a computer security specialist employed by a Seattle bank. He’s shown getting testy with — someone (played by Terminator 2’s creepy Robert Patrick) — at an important meeting, and then Jack’s day really gets bad: An American named Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) visits the office and demands Jack repay $95,000 in phantom gambling debt. Jack leaves work in an attempt to straighten out the apparent case of stolen identity, only to have a Brit named Bill Cox (yes, still Bettany) jump in Jack’s car and threaten him further. Soon, Jack’s ridiculously palatial (even by thriller standards) home is invaded by Cox’s toughs, who  hold wife Beth (Virginia Madsen) and dopey kids Sarah (Carly Schroeder) and Andrew (Jimmy Bennett III) hostage.

Cox has been studying the family via surveillance — a la another current release, Cache — so he knows everything about them. Such as the fact that Jack owns a gun, with which he gets whipped when he lies about it. (His kids’ later, whiny reaction: “I didn’t know he had a gun!” “They hit him so hard!”) Cox also knows that little mouth-breather Andy is allergic to peanuts. (Indiana Stanfield, at breakfast the next day: “Don’t touch him, don’t talk to him, and don’t *feed* him anything!”) Jack is outfitted with a camera pen and wire. His cell phone is cloned. And an email he tries to send to get help? The letters are deleted one by one soon after Jack starts typing them. Even Jack’s watchers are watched.

What it all comes down to, for anyone who’s never seen a movie before, is that Cox wants Jack to rob the bank he protects. The fake gambling debt, after a long period of not being mentioned, has been set up to give Jack a motive. Everyone inexplicably ends up being in on it. And the crime/counter-crime themselves? You know, furious typing and high-speed downloading just isn’t the same as masked men and good ol’ chases and fisticuffs. Though Ford and Bettany do get to go at each other — for a loooong time — in the movie’s requisite last-chapter mano a mano.

To be generous, it’s not Firewall’s overall schematic that makes it ridiculous. Bettany and Ford make suave rivals, and the script, though more often confusing, even has some (deliberately) funny moments. But the little absurdities quickly pile up. Such as the scary music when Cox offers Andy a cookie. And the attempt to turn the family dog into a contemporary Benji, when Jack actually asks the hound where the bad guys have gone. And then there’s the family itself: The wifey and youngsters seem to exist only to be shown huddled together, looking scared in a most pathetic B-movie way. When Sarah whimpers to their captors, “Why do you hate us so much?” it’s one of Firewall’s rare points that don’t require explanation.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

How do you feel about spending a couple of hours with an old man who can’t hear too well, goes on and on with statistics and stories, and ends every other sentence with “And Bob’s your uncle”? That’s what you get in writer-director Roger Donaldson’s The World’s Fastest Indian, the big-screen telling of the more-or-less-true story of Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins), an eccentric New Zealander who spent years refurbishing his 1920 Indian motorcycle to participate in and ultimately set records at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats Speed Week in the ’60s.

Yes, it’s a follow-your-dream movie. And yes, the film begins when Munro’s already a white-haired senior, who’s well aware that he’s knocking on heaven’s door. The feel-good script hits a particularly cringe-inducing low during Munro’s stay in the United States  — whereas a handful of other inspirational tales have been condemned for having a “magical Negro” help the hero out, in this case the cash-poor Munro is aided in ridiculously generous ways by a magical transvestite, car salesman, horny widow, Native American, and fellow racers. All the world’s in love with the guy, but, well, you might be, too. Hopkins makes Munro believably both old-world sharp and new-world clueless, rattling off corny jokes and the science behind his mechanics with rapidfire, Kiwi-accented ease but frequently becoming bewildered when faced with parts of modern American life such as cabs or event registrations. (Why Munro doesn’t blink when his new transvestite friend lowers his voice and says, “I’m a boy,” though, is anyone’s guess.) 

Hopkins carries himself with a bit of old-man creakiness that’s simultaneously spry, and you can see his Munro processing things he’s unfamiliar with as he’s first stymied, then asks questions, then figures it out. Donaldson slathers Munro’s arrival at Bonneville with some serious treacle, with contestants and crew alike gathering around him with twinkling eyes when he tells his life story. But it’s truly touching when Munro quietly first sets foot on the flats that he regards as “holy ground,” and the joy and gratitude he expresses when he finally gets to race will make you thrilled for the old coot. If this sounds like enough to compensate for The World’s Fastest Indian’s flaws, then Bob’s your uncle.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

How do you feel about spending a couple of hours with an old man who can’t hear too well, goes on and on with statistics and stories, and ends every other sentence with “And Bob’s your uncle”? That’s what you get in writer-director Roger Donaldson’s The World’s Fastest Indian, the big-screen telling of the more-or-less-true story of Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins), an eccentric New Zealander who spent years refurbishing his 1920 Indian motorcycle to participate in and ultimately set records at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats Speed Week in the ’60s.

Yes, it’s a follow-your-dream movie. And yes, the film begins when Munro’s already a white-haired senior, who’s well aware that he’s knocking on heaven’s door. The feel-good script hits a particularly cringe-inducing low during Munro’s stay in the United States  — whereas a handful of other inspirational tales have been condemned for having a “magical Negro” help the hero out, in this case the cash-poor Munro is aided in ridiculously generous ways by a magical transvestite, car salesman, horny widow, Native American, and fellow racers. All the world’s in love with the guy, but, well, you might be, too. Hopkins makes Munro believably both old-world sharp and new-world clueless, rattling off corny jokes and the science behind his mechanics with rapidfire, Kiwi-accented ease but frequently becoming bewildered when faced with parts of modern American life such as cabs or event registrations. (Why Munro doesn’t blink when his new transvestite friend lowers his voice and says, “I’m a boy,” though, is anyone’s guess.) 

Hopkins carries himself with a bit of old-man creakiness that’s simultaneously spry, and you can see his Munro processing things he’s unfamiliar with as he’s first stymied, then asks questions, then figures it out. Donaldson slathers Munro’s arrival at Bonneville with some serious treacle, with contestants and crew alike gathering around him with twinkling eyes when he tells his life story. But it’s truly touching when Munro quietly first sets foot on the flats that he regards as “holy ground,” and the joy and gratitude he expresses when he finally gets to race will make you thrilled for the old coot. If this sounds like enough to compensate for The World’s Fastest Indian’s flaws, then Bob’s your uncle.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Imagine Me & You asks you to imagine this: that an all-consuming, ’til-death-do-us-part love affair gets underway in even less time than it takes the Brokeback Mountain dudes to first get it on. And just like in Ang Lee’s movie, we don’t really see the sparks of the homosexual couple’s attraction, we’re just supposed to buy that they’re there. The two also have this in common: Despite both films’ shaky unveiling of their most important plot point, it’s not completely damning to either. Brokeback, granted, is in another universe than writer-director Ol Parker’s debut, but audiences weary of lapdogging Oscar-worthies should like this trifle just fine.

Imagine Me & You begins with a rather silly premise — and surprisingly, it’s not that Coyote Ugly’s Piper Perabo can play a British sweetheart, accent and everything. Rather, it’s that Perabo’s kittenish character, Rachel, is walking down the aisle with the handsome man who’s been her BFF, Heck (Match Point’s Matthew Goode), when she locks eyes with Luce (Lena Headey). Luce is the wedding’s florist — who apparently somehow never had to interact with the bride — and both women do double- and triple-takes. Rachel goes through with the ceremony (the plot’s not *that* ridiculous) and continues her pleasant life with Heck. Only she starts inviting Luce over for dinner, on the grounds that she’d make a good match for Heck’s horndog friend, Coop (Darren Boyd).

Rachel finds out that Luce is gay only after she and Coop leave — though Luce told Heck at the beginning of the visit — which drops a piano on Rachel’s head while she was already puzzled about the instant connection she felt with the florist. For the rest of the film, Rachel is glum around but still loving to Heck, and pays decreasingly innocent visits to Luce’s shop in the meantime. 

Parker’s script is full of Four Weddings and a Funeral[EM DASH]type humor, such as  the running gag of people who expect Luce to put together bouquets with messages as clear as greeting cards (“I want it to say I’m sorry his dog is dead, but not too sorry”) or the fun poked at British manners (Rachel and Heck stop at a park for a nighttime quickie, but run in to another like-minded couple — and introduce themselves).  Ironically, the women are the least enjoyable part of Imagine Me & You (whose musical namesake is, of course, played during the supposed-to-be-triumphant last chapter). The best quips go to Coop, with Boyd angling to be the shameless, skirt-chasing Hugh Grant, and Heck, with Goode proving he can play nice as well as Match Point[EM DASH]vapid as the charming, lovable Hugh Grant proxy.

Not that the female leads don’t do a good job — Perabo is sweet as the frazzled, slightly goofy Rachel, and Headey makes Luce more level-headed and composed, but never stiff. Parker gives his musings on life and love another layer of depth through the women’s parents: Luce’s widowed and reluctant-to-date mother (Sue Johnston) and Rachel’s bickering mum and dad (the terrific Celia Imrie and Anthony Head). The older folks’ stories, in fact, become more insightful and touching that the film’s main one, which falls  victim to romantic comedies’ typical flaw — resolutions that are too neat, quick, and ultimately absurd to give satisfaction. It’s disappointing that after Imagine Me & You’s  lighthearted if lightweight beginning, its wrap-up isn’t hard to imagine at all. 

Something New also aims to send a message about unexpected romance. Weird, then, that its story of love appears to be threaded with an undercurrent of hate. Picture, if you will, a blind date in which a white woman is unknowingly set up with a black man. Once they meet, the woman looks at her date — who’s handsome and charming — with barely veiled disgust. But the stench of his race lingers, because he’s a landscaper and though she won’t date him, she hires him to work on the yard of her new home. And won’t let him walk through the front door. And when her brother comes to visit one day, he’s rude to the rejected guy and explains his behavior by saying, “But he’s the *help*.”

Think it would fly? In a modern romantic comedy?

Well, the reverse is the basis of Something New, directed by first-timer Sanaa Hamri (her previous  experience includes music videos and a Prince concert film) and written by TV scribe Kriss Turner (Everybody Hates Chris, Living Single…perhaps we should forget about Whoopi). Kenya — subtle, Turner — played by Sanaa Lathan, is a successful, beautiful lawyer who dishes with her equally successful and beautiful Sex and the City[EM DASH]cloned girlfriends about the increasing improbability of any of them landing a man — the film’s original title was 42.4 Percent, which according to a Newsweek study is the share of educated black women who never marry. 

When Kenya’s friends tell her the real reason she’s alone is because she’s holding out for an IBM — ideal black man — she agrees to be set up by a coworker on a blind date. And then she meets the very white Brian (Simon Baker). And begins “What up?”ing every person of color in the coffee shop as she, clearly embarrassed, makes her way to a table with her date. Kenya then nearly immediately tells him it’s not going to work. Of course, she runs into him again at an outdoor party, when she tells the host that she loves the landscaping and is immediately reintroduced to the paleface.

Something New’s offenses lay in its execution, not ideas. As Guess Who proved last year — well, to some — the what’s-she-doing-with-a-white-guy plot can both project messages of tolerance and open-mindedness and also be mined for laughs. But the reverse-racism angle of Guess Who was mostly expressed through Bernie Mac’s comic overreactions — and, more important, the Caucasian object of the dad’s exasperation was loved by his daughter and given a chance by the rest of the family. Here, Brian is the bad guy all the way: Kenya literally shuts the door in his face, her brother (Donald Faison) tells her “You are not that desperate!”, and her mother (Alfre Woodard) soon pushes an IBM (Blair Underwood) her way after Kenya and Brian finally — if unbelievably — start to get cozy.

The script itself has a few funny moments (when Kenya and her girlfriends decide their new motto for love is “Let go, let flow,” one of them remarks that “it’s better than ‘Keep hope alive!’”) but the dialogue more often turns trite (“I’m just a landscaper,” Brian tells Kenya. “I take hard earth and make things bloom!”). And once Hamri has the unlikable Kenya lose her ’tude and — literally — let down her hair, things get unforgivably gushy, an impossible transition for Lathan to pull off. Even if the actress could, it’d be too late anyway. No matter how sweetly Something New wraps up, you never quite get its bad taste out of your mouth.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com