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Susan Granger's review of "LOVING JEZEBEL" (Shooting Gallery Films)
Hill Harper ("Beloved," "HavPlenty") oozes with charm in this diverting, amiable romantic comedy about a man who has spent a lifetime loving other men's women. Quite simply, he's attracted to Jezebels - i.e.: women who engage in amorous activities with men other than their declared mates. "Your problem is that you only want what you can't have," his buddy tells him - to which he replies, "Then why does God always put her in my path?" Bookended by irate gun-toting husband sequences, writer-director Kwyn Bader has structured a flashback story exploring how hapless Theodorus Melville (Hill Harper) survived a domineering mother (Phyllis Rashad) and became a hopeless romantic, appealing to that elusive, risk-taking element in a woman that yearns for excitement. "I don't care whether a woman is black, brown, yellow, green or the poster child for vanilla," he maintains. The strongest part of the narrative occurs when he's 17, losing his virginity to his best friend's gir! l-friend, noting: "It was, by far, the most impressive 30 seconds of my childhood." From there, it's on to college, where he almost gets killed for loving the wrong girls. Then his innocence is lost when he discovers that even a soul-touching love cannot last. Which eventually leads him to self-awareness and the one woman, a poet, who loves him back (Laurel Hollomon) and her jealous husband (David Moscow). Like Spike Lee and Woody Allen, Kwyn Baker finds fun in the foibles, angst and anxiety of the amorous male, but he sticks with the bland and harmless, almost to a fault, reducing many appealingly vulnerable scenes to sit-com "dance with destiny" cliches. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Loving Jezebel" is a light-hearted, genial 5. Charismatic Hill Harper is a superstar waiting to happen.
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