Something New

The interracial romantic comedy Something New is not the usual alternative chick flick that studios rush out over Super Bowl weekend, several critics are suggesting. I found myself unexpectedly moved, writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, who rates the film with three stars and says in his concluding remarks that the film delivers all the usual pleasures of a love story, and something more. The movie respects its subject and characters, and is more complex about race than we could possibly expect. Likewise Kyle Smith in the New York Post said that he found the movie irresistibly warm and surprisingly realistic. Gene Seymour in Newsday praises it as a romantic comedy with a lot on its mind. Indeed, it's one of the few romantic comedies to come out of Hollywood in recent years that actually has a mind and isn't ashamed to use it -- especially on such challenging matters as race and class. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times gives it a less enthusiastic but nevertheless positive review, describing it as pleasantly diverting, and adding, There's something reliably agreeable about watching two pretty people go through the usual romantic motions, especially since Big Hollywood seems to have more or less given up on love, perhaps because it's also more or less given up on women. Kevin Crust of the Los Angeles Times is one of the few critics who slam the film. The characterizations, even the leads, rarely rise above archetypes, he writes. The film's lack of depth as it oversimplifies the complexities of racism keep it from being anything other than a lightweight date movie.

I can't enough of this movie, the music and the story is great. I think they Kenya and Brian were a great couple and Hollwood needs to make more movies of this kind. No cussing and no begrading of women or races.