“Something New” - 4 thumbs up!
CVK & JC
Hey, it’s us hangin’ with Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker! ;) As you know if you’re a follower of MMW and Addicted to Race, we have an endless capacity for cheese so we had to document our trip last night to watch the interracial romantic comedy “Something New.”
We’ll be giving it a full review on the next episode of Addicted to Race but in the meantime, GO OUT AND SEE IT TODAY! We were shocked at how good it was. Seriously, this is a movie that gets it right. It’s not scared to delve into the tough issues, but at the same time it doesn’t feel the need to get bogged down into the racial drama that we’re all so sick of. It definitely gets the Mixed Media Watch stamp of approval!
Johnna wrote:
I greatly enjoyed this film, and I have been raving about it to my friends and family. Some parts of the story seemed quite realistic. I also enjoyed the way the movie veered away from some of the usual Hollywood portrayals of interaction between blacks and whites. Usually you have a black person who comes along and teaches all the uptight white people how to be cool and fun, along with the requisite dance scene. In this film, the roles are reversed, and although Kenya does learn to be more laid-back, she doesn’t completely change her personality.
Posted 07 Feb 2006 at 12:05 pm ¶
Bertrum says wrote:
Yeah–it was very different seeing a black person portrayed as uptight and elitist for a change. And as a black male I have to give the movie a thumbs up for not trying to put black males in a bad light (a la waiting to exhale, color purple etc.) It really wasn’t about us at all–just this one particular woman and one particular man. The only draw back or critique I would give of the movie is that the Brian character was almost too unrealistically devoid of racial hang ups or presumptions. But that was such a minor thing for an otherwise pretty good movie (for a chick flick).
Posted 07 Feb 2006 at 1:30 pm ¶
T-Ann wrote:
I loved the movie! I’m a AA female who totally related to Sanaa’s character… ambitious, successful but I have been in (and prefer) interracial relationships. It was nice to see a movie about a black woman dating and dealing in a relationship with a white man.
Posted 08 Feb 2006 at 12:55 am ¶
Hapa Meister wrote:
Va va voom!!! Rarrrr! *winks*
Posted 08 Feb 2006 at 5:20 am ¶
Talley Williams wrote:
While I thought that the movie was interesting I found it to be one sided,and Pollyannaish as it related to interracil dating. I love (tongue in cheek) how Bryan as a White male had all the answers for Sanaa’s world. He cleared “her” jungle,knew just how to release her stress,bring nature hikes to her dull life,if this don’t beat all suggests that she add color to “her” life, and wouldn’t you know after the sweat of his brow…he let there be light in what was once her gloomy garden of Eden after he created all things good.Actually the “something new” is not black/white…it really is a male, any male paying attention to the woman in his and daring to express intimacy. Yet this movie appeared to be an attempt at making the Anglo Saxon male the new Super Hero in a Black Woman’s Life.
Posted 18 Feb 2006 at 1:51 am ¶
David Clodomir wrote:
The story was cute. They dealt with a very real societal issue. How successfully they did so is arguable, but they tackled it in a way very few others have or would. For that I applaud the movie. But did any one else notice that the movie was just plain BAD???
It was badly written and horribly edited. Frankly, the editing might have been the movie’s achilles heel. While I enjoy a good story like the next guy, I’m also a movie person. Film, being a director’s medium, is highly predicated on how well it’s edited. Scenes were disjointed. There were many times it felt as if certain points or issues were being forced through, as opposed to being allowed to happen organically.
It was obvious that they did not have a big studio budget for this film (case in point: Simon Baker is clearly the poor man’s Paul Walker) but did it have to be THAT obvious? Did the scene where she goes to the coffee shop to meet Brian for the first time [and runs into her black male friend on his bike with his boys] have to be SO contrived? A director worth his or her salt could have displayed every ounce of discomfort…apprehension…fear…all of it, without one word of dialogue.
I think the actor’s were up to the job. So why FORCE such hokey movie moment like her intentially talking to evbery black person at the table, or forcing dialogue that no black person would really use in that situation. The eyes could have said it all. The camera’s eye, and the actor’s eyes. But instead, we were treated to an awkward seemingly displaced scene.
This was indicative of much of the movie to me. All of this being said, I enjoyed the experience of seeing a story such as this told with as much candor as possible and truly appreciate the direction they were trying to go. But as movies go, this one was a big bust.
Posted 27 Feb 2006 at 11:52 am ¶