BEFORE: It's here, finally here! The scheduled end of the romance chain, the final tally is 46, and let me point out that I'm a professional, you should NOT try this at home. Really, nobody should watch 46 films on this topic in a row, because it WILL mess with your head. Unless you don't stick to rom-coms, once in a while break it up with a film about break-ups or messed-up relationships or you know, toxic relationships or sexual assault or something. The chain knows that 46 rom-coms in a row is not healthy, so it does find ways to mix things up a bit, thank GOD.
Parker Sawyers carries over from "Austenland", and today's film has also been kicking around the list for a number of years, I may have programmed both films several times before but then cut them due to space limitations - but also, they both proved VERY difficult to link to, so if there's an opportunity to link to them now, I just have to take it. Thankfully Parker Sawyers has also appeared in a variety of movies, and so by tomorrow I can be on action movies and start making my way toward Easter.
I'm going to sort of skip a day here, and count this film as my Friday film, so I can send a big Birthday SHOUT-out to Vanessa Bell Calloway, born 3/20/57, and she plays Michelle Obama's mother tonight. Happy birthday, I promise to not do the math. The big trend in my movies right now is films with smaller casts, like "Z for Zachariah" which had only 3 actors in it. Tonight's movie has 24, but that's still not a lot - I have to do more linking with less actors, and so these birthdays are going to be very few and far between. But skipping a day means I'm going to have to double-up next week if I want to stay on track for Easter.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Barry" (Movie #3,970)
THE PLOT: Barack Obama, a freshman at Harvard Law School, gets a job at a Chicago law firm under the orders of young Michelle Robinson. After some reluctance, she accepts his invitation for a day together that will change her life.
AFTER: This is the long-awaited follow-up to that other movie about Obama, which depicted him dating white girls while at Columbia, and taking them to eat in Harlem and feeling out of place. It took me five years to program THAT film, and now another five years has gone by since 2021, so yeah, wow, 10 years to watch two movies. I have been busy with other things, though.
Yes, this is THAT film, the one that's going to supply a hit of nostalgia in TWO ways, because we're going to flash back to 1989 when Barack and Michelle had their first date, which involved an African-American art exhibit, a community meeting, drinks and a screening of "Do the Right Thing". But also we're going to be reminded of when we last had a very competent President, RIGHT? (I'm calling out both parties here, because Biden had senility issues and Trump, too, but the latter is also a complete and utter moron. I didn't sarcastically said "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" both times, and now we see that literally everything has gone wrong. Twice.)
I have to be fair tonight, because while this film is touching and sweet and makes two very public figures completely relatable, it also represents an H.R. violation - because Barack was interning at this Chicago law firm and Michelle was his supervisor. Did they disclose? Not sure that was even a thing back then, but Michelle was certainly concerned with how that was going to look, and so she refused to call it a date. To her it was just two co-workers attending a community meeting and then doing research into racial relations and urban violence by watching the Spike Lee movie. Look, people at the law firm probably wouldn't care all that much, if two (I'm guessing the only two) African-American people at the firm started dating each other. Back then to the white people this probably just would have made the most sense. Now if one of them was white, or if they considered Barack as half-white, it might have raised a few eyebrows. But hey, maybe not.
Here at the end of the romance chain for the year, it's really a shame that THIS was really the only film I needed to watch - we can get a glimpse of the bigger picture just by looking at the small, or the one. Two people meet through their jobs, they go out, one calls it a "date" before the other one does, they communicate, get to know each other, they like what they see so they decide to move forward. No love triangle, no divorce, no wedding getting cancelled at the last second, just two people opening up to each other and considering the road that might lie ahead. There will be twists and turns, sure, but that doesn't mean the journey isn't worth taking. The symbolism of the movie and bumping into someone from the law firm afterwards means that their relationship will always be viewed through a racial lens, there's no getting around that.
Barack openly admits that his dating history included relationships with white women, and also that he smoked a lot of grass while he was in high school. Then we've got the complicated issues with his father who moved back to Kenya and left him with his mother in Hawaii - though he seemed to grow up in many places around the world. At this point his father had died in a car accident, so really there would be no resolution in that relationship, other than what Barack could accomplish by himself.
That's it, that's the film, it's just the first date, or excursion, that they went on together, because we all already know what came later, to some extent. The film's just 84 minutes long, so even the Obamas' first date was longer than that. Communication, compromise, and making sure that you and your partner are on the same page, or at least reading the same book, that's what it's all about. The whole nature of positive relationships summed up in one day in the life of two very important but also very normal people. If you find yourself deciding between watching this film and that sham of a documentary about Melania Trump, well, the choice is clear, isn't it?
Directed by Richard Tanne
Also starring Tika Sumpter (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Vanessa Bell Calloway (last seen in "Dragged Across Concrete"), Phillip Edward Van Lear, Taylar Fondren, Deanna Reed-Foster (last seen in "Widows"), Jerod Haynes, Gabrielle Lott-Rogers, Preston Tate Jr., Donn Carl Harper, Tom McElroy, Stephanie Monday, Eric Morgan Stuart (last seen in "Reality Bites"), Deborah Geffner (last heard in "Under the Silver Lake"), Donald Paul
RATING: 6 out of 10 flavors at Baskin-Robbins (he remembered her favorite flavor, and it's their first damn date - because that's what you do, you ask questions and you make mental notes, and you use that information to show that you care...it's the little things)
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