"JUST WRIGHT" TRIES TO GET IT RIGHT

(c) Steven G Fullwood

"A female physical therapist is drafted by an all-star basketball player to help him recover from a career-threatening injury. The two soon fall in love in what is a modern-day Cinderella story."
- Yahoo.com film blurb. 

I went with my bud "R" to see it even as I made fun of it after getting a waft of the stinking trailer. Corn-nee romantic comedy starring black people. Still I see enough bad (white) mainstream films (unintentionally) and apparently have shitloads of disposable income (in my mind) so I parked my yellowed ass at Harlem's Magic Johnson Theater, which has the amenities a self-satisfied critic like myself sometimes needs and desires: black movies and black people. Of the black movies, there are only maybe two per century, primarily written (hahaha!) and directed (bwahahah!) by Tyler fucking Perry. Of the black people, I want to be with my people as they talk their asses all the way through the film, laughing at the funny parts, booing and hissing, and saying things like "Oh no she didn't!" as if they were sitting at home alone in their draws.

Black groupspeak at the movies works for me…in doses. Aint tryna be at the MJ Theater all the time. Sometimes I just want to see a movie and want everyone in the theater, black, white or whatever to shutty up. But a running commentary has its special delights. Saw Cadillac Records there and the only thing that kept me awake was the running commentary by my homies, and I appreciated that.

So…Just Wright. Let me get this out of the way first so that we all know what page we're on. Queen Latifah and Common have absolutely ZERO chemistry and so the movie doesn't really work because it is a romantic comedy and there's the glaring expectation that we have to imagine these two going at it some point like rabbits. Imagine for a moment Latifah and Common boning? I'll wait. How's that working out for you? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Much of the film is spent on Latifah, who is by the way equal parts feminine and butch hot, so she doesn't exactly work as the placid girl-next-door type. And while she's beautiful and got puppies-jumping-up-and-barking cleavage, no frumpy t-shirt and jeans combo can hide that baby got front and back. You really can't imagine her (voluptuous) and Common (who is a little tiny) making babies because again, we have to believe these certain conventions so that the tired old romantic comedy script holds our attention.

Common, despite his banging body, looks like Skeletor and acts like Prince in the wildly successful, but poorly acted, Purple Rain. Not a great act to follow unless there's a great soundtrack to boot, but no, there ain't. Like Prince he mumbles and pouts and offers sideways come hither glances in a deep mumbling voice and a distinct "I'm reading this line off the back off a chalkboard behind the camera" acting style that no amount of gratuitous bare chest shots can erase from the cerebral cortex. In sum he's a cardboard. If they had just used a cardboard cut out of him, and superimposed animated lips, you wouldn't have known the difference.

Despite Latifah's charm and natural skills, this be not a love match.

Then there's Paula Patton, the epitome of why men and women love some light-skinded tail. Remember now, she was the concerned hottie lesbo teacher in the film Precious? Here she plays a sizzling gold digger, the kind that rappers rap about all the time as skeezers but somehow end up in their videos and as their wives or wifeys. Much of Patton's screen time is spent scheming trying to nab an NBA athlete and if art imitates reality, she'd most certainly bag a sack of 'em.  Her voice is a bit distracting. Not Macy Gray throat-slashed-in-fight-in-Detroit- scratched-up distracting, but enough to wonder if she has a sore throat and in need of antibiotics.

So you know the story. I opened with it, silly, pay attention. Okay, so here's a quick run down so that you know precisely what's up. Girl meets boy, boy invites girl to party, girl's hot best friend nabs boy, girl shuffles off to corner to jump into a vat of Haagen-Dazs, boy gets hurt, hot best friend dumps boy, girl helps boy recover, best friend comes back, boy dumps girl, girl shuffles off to corner, jumps back into the vat of Haagen-Dazs, boy sees through best friend, boy discovers his true love (girl!) and finds girl, licks the Haagen-Dazs off her mouth, and lives happily ever after, yay, yay, yay!

Not much there as a movie, but to be honest, not much really to shake a stick at. Sure Latifah has the glint of masculinity bouncing off her broad shoulders, and so it looks as if we are watching two black homos go at it. That made me laugh a bit. And when the two go to bed, we see them AFTER they supposedly rocked each other's world. She's all aglow and dancing in the bed like she's in an advertisement for bed sheets. You'd think that maybe there was two-headed vibrator involved, or that two other people showed up making it a naughty foursome.

As for rounding out the rest of the cast, Phylicia Rashad plays Common's mother, channeling her standard Claire Huxtable. I half expected her to say, "Cliff do you know what Rudy did today?" Forever hottie Pam Grier plays Latifah's mom and we see her and her hottie husband, some Danny Glover doppelganger, offer the appropriate sage advice at the appropriate moments. And then there were what I think were actual professional athletes in the film, but who cares? I'm only concerned about how many times I can use the word "hottie" in this review.

MJ Theater did not disappoint as there were about 8 preteen girls and somebody's little brother running around the theater, causing a ruckus. When they did settle down they offered interesting, if age appropriate commentary about the golddigger, Latifah and Common. I'll spare you most of it, but the last one came as the film's end and we were leaving the theatre. "That was garbage," one girl complained.  A bit harsh I think because frankly, good creative romantic comedies are hard to pull off.

Sure, Just Wright was fairly color-by-numbers, but when do you ever get to see a larger voluptuous black woman get the man (and no, Precious doesn't count.) This is important to consider for folks who deserve to see more than Halle Berry types, particularly those 8 little girls, tragically impressionable and in need of diverse screen images, of women of size and in love, in the bed, being loved, than the bullshit they normally digest and mimic, and often get destroyed by.

Steven G Fullwood is a critic of massive talent. He's not trying to sell you a damn thing. He enjoys cultural criticism for the art of it. Buy his book of humor, FUNNY, at vepress.com.