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Back Shelf Beauties
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Something New I keep trying to pick up tips on how to woo women from movies, and I think I have finally found the surefire, can't miss, she's-going-to-fall-in-love-with-me move of all time! Movies have taught me you can win over a woman by building her an oasis. Tom Hanks gets Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Terminal by building her a fountain in the middle of an airport terminal. Mark Ruffalo wins over Reese Witherspoon in Just Like Heaven by assembling a roof top garden for her. Now, Simon Baker is trying to attract Sanaa Lathan in Something New by digging her a backyard garden of paradise. OK, I don't have the skills necessary to build an oasis like that, but I can surround a comfortable chair with bowls of ice cream, and chocolate bars. That sounds like heaven to me! Sanaa Lathan stars as Kenya - a successful, uptight, neurotic financial advisor who is tired of living the single life (Testify!). Ideally, she is looking for a similarly successful black professional man to share married life in a perfect home with perfect kids and a perfect garden. Ready to try anything after a long period of loneliness, Kenya ends up going on a blind date, shocked to discover she has been set up with a white guy, Brian (Simon Baker). It goes horribly, but through a twist of fate, he is the landscaper recommended to her when Kenya wishes to fix up her garden (Movies are sooo tricky that way). Soon, the hippie, Zen, studly gardener is winning her over, but her friends and family are a bit wary of her relationship with a white guy. Can Kenya and Brian deal with pressures from friends, family and society to find true love? Is this true love? Can each one relate to the other's struggles and troubles? Something New has all of the subtlety and nuance I found lacking in Crash. That's not to say Crash was a bad film, but Something New tackles the issues with a softer and more realistic touch. Writer Kriss Turner takes the usual opposites attract formula and gives it several layers as Brian and Kenya have more differences than skin color. He's a nature boy who likes to go on hikes and dig gardens. She's deathly afraid of spiders and more comfortable in a business suit. He's Mr. Laidback. She's constantly uptight. You get the picture. Turner presents us with an intelligent film where characters deal with real feelings, real questions family and friends would have for the people they love and fights about incidents that truly do happen on a regular basis, even if they aren't always driven by racial motives. I wish Turner gave us both sides of the picture by showing how Brian's friends react to Kenya, which would have fleshed out Brian better, but Turner seems happy to let the audience believe Brian's only friend is his dog (a nice dog, but you can't bring him to a pizza place and share a beer). Another reason to like Something New is the cast. Lathan is an actress I have admired since Love and Basketball, yet, most people only know her as the woman in Alien vs. Predator, which does not give Lathan her rightful due (and is a bit of shame she must live down every time I review one of her movies. Since I had to sit through Alien vs. Predator, she's going to hear about it). In Something New, she's able to show various parts of Kenya's personality with ease as she moves from angst to sexy to angry to lovey dovey all without breaking a sweat. Baker does a great job playing the typical romantic comedy hero who is scruffy-sexy and never seems to let the world bother him, but I think his role a bit too one-dimensional. Alfre Woodard makes a fun appearance as Kenya's mother who says and acts in ways that will keep the audience laughing. However, the biggest shock in the movie is Mike Epps. Usually, Epps is the annoying comic relief guy in stupid comedies, but director Sanaa Hamri reels him in and directs Epps to be more human and real, or he went to the same acting classes as Jack Black did for King Kong. Something New is a good romance movie just in time for the always expanding Valentine's Day season. 3 Waffle (Out Of 4) Copyright 2006 - WaffleMovies.com
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