"A Thin Line between Love and Hate" A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL April 6, 1996 When a Black female writer such as Terry McMillan criticizes or caricatures some contemporary Black male types as she did in "Waiting to Exhale" she lays herself open to the charge of male-bashing. A new film, "A Thin Line Between Love and Hate," the handiwork and brainchild of African American writer/director/actor Martin Lawrence, is another chapter on the war between the sexes, African American style. Though it focuses on contemporary, urban, hip, Black masculinity and it's from a male perspective, nonetheless it is a critique of rather than an apologia for that construction of Black masculinity. The fact that the critique is coming from a Black man and is also very funny may absolve it from the charge of male bashing, and so it may have a better chance of being listened to without so much defensiveness by those who need to hear its message the most. The story is told in flashback by our "hero" Darnell Wright (played by Lawrence). Mr. Wright thinks he's surely the hottest thing to come along in years. While rather slight and not really handsome, Darnell is doing fine by his lights. He's got a good paying job promoting and helping manage an upscale Black nightclub called Chocolate City in the Crenshaw/Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles. He drives a yuppie car, dresses in expensive clothes, and has more women than he can keep track of. They fall for his line right and left. Many of them make the mistake of thinking that Mr. Wright is "Mr. Right." But that's a mistake. "Commitment" is not a word in Darnell's vocabulary. He's having far too much fun as the footloose love 'em and leave 'em bachelor and bragging and betting with his male pals about which women he can hit on. His doting Mother (Della Reese) warns him that he's going to get into trouble but he pays her no mind. Meanwhile he sees it as his role to protect his teenage sister's virtue against guys just like himself. Sound familiar? Enter Brandi (played by Lynn Whitfield). She's wealthy, sophisticated, and educated (a Harvard MBA). She gets around town in a chauffered limousine and is CEO of her own very up-scale real estate brokerage in Beverly Hills. Darnell is smitten and challenged because at first Brandi won't give this fast talking Inglewood-boy-made-good the time of day. But he persists, and she does, finally, succumb to his "sincere" pose and his endearingly goofy kind of charm. But poor Darnell is out of his league. Brandi is portrayed as high strung and up-tight from the outset (a kind of Black Faye Dunaway type) who is very skittish about emotional involvement. Finally she allows herself to trust him Darnell and she makes the mistake of belieing him when he tells her he loves her. Only when Brandi and Darnell are in bed together for the first time does she break the news to him about why she had been so man-shy. Her first husband left her for a blonde and she murdered him. Darnell, who knows he has fed her a line, has the sense to be scared to death of her when he hears this. But later on, when he finally decides he really does actually love his childhood sweetheart Mia (who's home from the Air Force with a strong sense of self and not willing to take any crap from Darnell), he tries to break off with Brandi. Easier said than done. At this point the film moves into high gear. Some (including Darnell who is something of a movie buff, see it as a "Fatal Attraction" situation) but actually it goes into "She-Devil" mode as Brandi plots and executes revenge on yet another smarmy man who has betrayed her. While Whitfield doesn't do diabolical revenge satire with quite the range and gusto that Roseanne Barr was able to muster in "She- Devil" (but who does?) this is more a failure of the screenplay than the acting. The film does still manage to achieve a dark satiric tone quite reminiscent of "She-Devil," so that, despite the over-the-edge things the woman scorned does, she's not totally vilified. Even as her actions get more and more extreme, you can understand the demonic gleam in her eye. She may be crazed, but she's not irrational and Darnell deserves a lot of what he gets. After it's all over, the moral of Martin Lawrence's story is spoken out loud and clear; Darnell has learned his lesson--the hard way, to be sure--and now knows what it really means to be a man instead of the misogynist jerk he was. I thought the film was a bit too long and draggy in places, but Martin Lawrence is a talented comic actor with a gift for visual humor, and a write/director of ability. And the fact that there is a Black male filmmaker out there who has made a film that you might even want to call feminist or womanist, is reason to rejoice. For the Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1996. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint or reproduce this review without the permission of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu.