BEFORE: Well, we find ourselves at the confluence of February, the month of romance, and also Black History Month, and also Super Bowl weekend. So that's all led me here, now there are sports stars listed in the credits for this one, but they turned out to be NBA stars. Damn, I was so close! Wrong sport, I know, but at least I watched a few days ago with Joe Namath in it, and he was in a Super Bowl once, a long time ago. (I checked tomorrow's films credits, there's a boxer but no NFL stars, but there's a totally different way to tie this film's sequel to the Super Bowl...and to think Taylor Swift was in THREE films I watched last year, I stupidly used them all up)
Regina Hall carries over from "People Places Things".
EDIT: I forgot that Turner Classic Movies was starting their "31 Days of Oscar" programming on February 9, so I'm going back and dropping them in post facto. They're dividing up the movies by category this year, so today is Day 2, devoted to:
Best Supporting Actress Nominees:
6:00 am "Merrily We Live" (1938)
8:00 am "Caged" (1950)
10:00 am "Mogambo" (1953)
12:00 pm "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955)
2:00 pm "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)
4:00 pm "Harvey" (1950)
6:00 pm "Butterflies Are Free" (1972)
Best Supporting Actress Winners:
8:00 pm "Written on the Wind" (1957)
10:00 pm "The Miracle Worker" (1962)
12:00 am "Pollock" (2000)
2:15 am "A Patch of Blue" (1965)
4:15 am "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)
I think I've seen 5 out of these 12, "Rebel Without a Cause", "Singin' in the Rain", "Harvey", "Butterflies Are Free" and "Pollock", so 12 out of 22 overall, already down to 54%.
THE PLOT: Four friends conspire to turn the tables on their women when they discover the ladies have been using Steve Harvey's relationship advice against them.
AFTER: Once upon a time, a game-show host wrote a book, and he said it was filled with helpful advice - it became a best-seller, and people started to say, "Huh, this guy might really know what he's talking about!" By the time we all discovered he was a straight-up con man, and didn't know anything like he claimed to, it was too late, we'd already elected him President. But then Steve Harvey, another game-show host wrote a book about relationships, and that seemed to be taken a little more seriously, somehow. Wait, the guy from "Family Feud" was advising people on relationship matters? That's where we found ourselves, and then it became a movie, again collectively we don't seem to be sure how these things happen, but they do.
The book tried to break everyone down into certain stereotypes, in order for people to best understand their relationships, they first have to understand themselves, right? And stereotypes are a great short-cut to doing this, it's just a faster way to quickly defining people and then we can learn about ourselves and our prospective mates and get on with our happy lives - and there's never been any negative repercussions from using stereotypes to define people, right? Whew, that's a relief. I'd hate to think that Steve Harvey just took the manuscript from "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus", slapped a new book-jacket on it and waited for the money to roll in. (Umm, wait a second...)
So the movie takes eight of those stereotypes and turns them in to characters and makes them date each other, it's a bit like if some kids had a giant tea party with both Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes, and then the different personalities of those dolls came out, and, well, conflicts are sure to arise, because boys and girls are different, though frankly I think the clock might be ticking on that one, when you throw the women's rights movement, gender-neutral politics, trans issues and wokeness into the mix, I was kind of led to believe that our future society wouldn't fall back on all these simplistic thoughts like "Men are hunters, women are gatherers" or "Men work in an office and women take care of the house" or "Men drive the car, but women navigate and pack the lunch." I mean, they're all stupid and outdated and need to be forgotten, right? Stupid screenwriters can't seem to let go of some of these, and neither could my parents. I just want to live my own life, how about you?
So here are the four pairings, and notice that they managed to pair up the personalities in the WORST possible way, to create the most drama and conflict here. I'm not saying these are wrong, and I'm not saying these pairings DON'T happen in real life, I'm just pointing out that if they had matched up these stereotypes in a different way, they might not have a movie that had situations that would make the most of the male-female differences. First there's "The Mama's Boy" vs. "The SIngle Mom". Michael can't connect with women because he's so devoted to his mother, he's got a standing dinner date with her every Sunday, and Candace is the single mom who won't date a man who doesn't accept the fact she has a young son, or sometimes she's afraid to mention this at all. The relationship isn't really possible until Michael cuts the apron strings and decides to put his girlfriend ahead of his mother. This is perhaps the easiest one to fix, it just requires a little re-prioritization on his part, and honestly, if Candace is a mother herself, she should understand this takes time, because she has a strong bond with her own son, and she would want that bond to continue when her son is an adult. Right? There's no real conflict here, this feels rather manufactured, because ideally there should be room in Michael's life for both a girlfriend and his mother - there should be no need for him to label his mother as "Work" on his phone so people don't know his mother is calling him. That's just silly.
Next is "The Non-Committer" vs. "The Girl Who Wants the Ring". This one's about the guy who just doesn't want to grow up, he's got sci-fi posters and action figures and plays video-games with his girlfriend, only she decides she wants him to have a better job, lose the teenage stuff and buy some real furniture. Any resemblance to my own life is purely coincidental here. But here conversation is key, this guy (the token white lead) has been living this way for so long that he doesn't realize something is wrong, he needs a woman to tell him that he's in his thirties now and he needs a job with benefits, also there's duct tape holding the couch together and it doesn't have to be that way. Also if marriage is one of her goals, she might need to state that outright, rather than just hint about it, because he likes his life a certain way, and he's never going to change it unless there's a clear next step, some people just need practical advice, or a big push to get motivated to make a change.
Then there's "The Dreamer" vs. "The Woman Who Is Her Own Man". Dominic is a line cook, with vague aspirations to be a successful chef, however he also has to work as a parking valet to make ends meet, and doesn't quite know how to get from HERE to THERE. So naturally the film pairs him up with Lauren, who's already the CEO of a company and appreciates the finer things in life. Like, umm, good food and wine - OK, so dating someone who can cook her a restaurant-quality meal would seem to be a good match, right? Wrong, because she can't take him seriously until he has a business plan, some investors and his own A-list restaurant. They're not really on equal footing, but do they really need to be? As Steve Harvey says, if she makes a six figure salary, does he have to? If the relationship works out, doesn't someone have to cook dinner or take out the trash if the other one is a high-power executive? Why can't HE be the eye candy at HER corporate functions?
Finally theres "The Player" vs. "The 90 Day Rule Girl". Here the man just wants to have a good time (sex) while the woman's been through too many one-night stands where the man splits the next morning and never calls again - so she follows Steve Harvey's advice to not be intimate for the first 90 days of the relationship, the number of days is arbitrary, but the point is to get to know each other on a deep personal level before well, you know. Keep the "cookie" in the cookie jar, don't feed it to the "cookie monster" because well, he'll just make a mess of it. Honestly, this is a bit confusing because we still don't know why Mya has such a problem with men leaving the next morning, I mean, she gave each man the cookie, why don't they want another cookie? Is there something wrong with her personality, is she boring or too clingy or does she just expect too much? Either way, for this particular type of person the solution is to slow things down and connect on a deeper level, and this turns out to be just general good advice, I mean, really it's just what Zeke "The Player" needed to, so maybe men and women just aren't that different after all? God, that would be terrible news for anyone trying to sell an advice book that's based on the different approaches that men and women have in relationships.
Actually, I think Steve Harvey's going to do all right, because look what happened, a whole lot of women went out and bought his book. Then when the men got together and talked about how all of their girlfriends wanted to know about their short-term goals, they realized that those girls were all reading the SAME self-help book - so they had to go out and buy it too, but only so they could get out ahead of this game, figure out what their women wanted and pretend to give it to them. Because they couldn't just ASK what their women wanted, that would be ridiculous - and meanwhile, Steve Harvey's laughing all the way to the bank once the men had to buy his book too, to figure out the women's game. So then the men know what the women know, and then the women know that the men know what the women know. And then once the men know that the women know that the men know what the women know, maybe they can start to have a conversation about the best ways to move forward together.
Nah, I'm just kidding, men and women are still going to keep on lying to each other and being selfish or not being completely honest about their feelings, and then people will keep breaking up when the relationships get too hard or they get their feelings hurt, because if the self-help books really could solve all the relationship problems through creating greater understanding, then all those counselors and advice-givers would be out of a job, right? It's like peace in the Middle East, you can engineer a temporary truce but you're just never going to solve the larger conflict that's been going on for centuries.
Also starring Kevin Hart (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Michael Ealy (last seen in "Fatale"), Taraji P. Henson (last seen in "Term Life"), Terrence Jenkins (last heard in "Fatale"), Jerry Ferrara (last seen in "Empire State"), Gabrielle Union (last heard in "Strange World"), Romany Malco (last seen in "Top Five"), Meagan Good (last seen in "One Missed Call"), Steve Harvey (last heard in "Racing Stripes"), Gary Owen (last seen in "Get Hard"), Wendy Williams (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Chris Brown (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Keri Hilson (last seen in "Riddick"), Jenifer Lewis (also last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), La La Anthony, Caleel Harris (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween"), Arielle Kebbel (last seen in "Be Cool"), Tika Sumpter (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Tony Rock (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Jessica Camacho, J. Anthony Brown (last seen in "xXx: State of the Union"), Thomas Miles, Sharon Braithwaite, Angela Elayne Gibbs (last seen in "Fled"), Bruce Bruce (last seen in "Top Five'), Omar Leyva (last seen in "Don't Let Go"), Chrisanne Eastwood, Melyssa Ford, Gwen Yeager, Andrew Rolfe, Noah Longo (last seen in "Still Waiting..."), Bunnie Rivera (last seen in "Bright"), Peter Arpesella, Danny Vola, Jamie Foster Brown, Will Packer,
with cameos from Matt Barnes, Shannon Brown, Rasual Butler, Morris Chestnut (last seen in "Heist"), Darren Collison, Lisa Leslie, Luenell (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Metta World Peace, Kelly Rowland, Sherri Shepherd (last seen in "Cellular'), J.B. Smoove (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"),
RATING: 5 out of 10 one-dollar bills brought to the Ass Factory
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