A Thin Line Between Love And Hate A film review by Chris Casino
*1/2 out of **** (poor, but has some good moments).
Directed by Martin Lawrence, Written by Martin Lawrence, Bentley Kyle Evans, Kenny Buford, Kim Bass, Produced by Martin Lawrence.
Cast: Martin Lawrence (Darnell Wright), Lynn Whitfield (Brandi Web), Regina King (Mia Wilkins), Bobby Brown (Tee), Della Reese (Momma Wright)
The main problem with Martin Lawrence's pet project, A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, like any Fatal Attraction variation where the protagonist is a man, is that his character is an irresponsible jerk, and if that is the case, it doesn't seem to do anything except justify the woman's actions.
That is especially the case in Lawrence's Darnell Wright. He is one of those macho guys with women lined up a mile long. Now don't think I condone this just because I'm male. My philosophy is, if you are one of the few heterosexual males lucky enough to get your hands on a beautiful, kind girl, you should treat her like a princess and respect her. Darnell doesn't think like this. He sleeps with these girls once and dumps them. And by the period in the film he discovered that his newest target, beautiful, wealthy Brandi Web (played nicely by Whitfield) who runs a successful real estate business, is out to kill him for dumping her for his childdhood friend Mia (King), I found myself thinking, "I'm supposed to feel sorry for this guy?"
After all, it is largely Darnell's fault. If he is lining up all these women, you'd think he'd have enough common sense to think it would backfire on him one day, as his mother says it does. But he doesn't, so you get the sense that he's not only irresponsible, but also pretty dumb. You especially get this sense that he's dumb after Brandi tells him she killed her husband for allegedly abusing her. (I'd put my pants on in two seconds after that!)
Now, Brandi is a psycho bitch, but it's hard not to agree with what she says to Darnell during the finale about guys like him treating her like garbage.
One final flaw, though, is letting Brandi fall for Darnell to begin with. Brandi is a classy, intelligent woman with an MBA from Harvard, who initally resists Darnell's "immature play" as she calls it, as any woman like her would in real life. But all of a sudden she says yes. But when you listen to Darnell's four letter word vocabulary watch his actions, you wonder why such an intelligent woman would fall for a guy like Darnell period, much less have such an unhealthy obsession for him!
Lawrence can be good when he wants to, but in order to prove it, he needs to let other people write and direct his movies. Look at this movie. Four writers, as a result it's too long (two hours, when it could've easily worked at ninety minutes!) and it has a lot of subplots and characters that appear and disappear as quickly as they came (which makes me think the writers didn't get along), all of which isn't necessary.
There are some bright spots, though. Whitfield, Regina King, Della Reese, and Bobby Brown all do what they can with lazily written parts, and they help it out a lot. And there are some funny parts (like, for example, the scene where Reese attempts to fight Whitfeld for harrassing her son and damaging her property), but they're just not enough to sustain the film.
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