CINEMA VIEWS with Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

"Two Can Play That Game"

The Battle of the Sexes gets a turn on the Black Hand Side when two Buppies bump heads after knockin' boots in the film "Two Can Play That Game."

Vivica Fox stars, and Morris Chestnut is along for the ride with an ensemble cast in a very entertaining and talky version of the 1940 and '50s Gender Comedies.

Anthony Anderson continues his tear after the films "Me Myself, and Irene," "Exit Wounds," with DMX and Steven Seagal; and the late Aaliyah's last exhibited film "Romeo Must Die."

He's the advisor to Chestnut, who is becoming, as I predicted, the Clark Gable of the Black romantic genre after his turns in "The Best Man," "Brothers" and "The Inkwell." Tony tells Keith "this is larger than you, dawg," and tells him this is a struggle for ALL Man Kind, and he has to carry the battle back to Shante for the good of all Brothas!

Keith Fenton is in a committed relationship with Shante Smith, but makes the mistake of taking another woman to his girlfriend's favourite club. Shante decides he must be punished and brought to heel, and undertakes a Ten Day Plan to do just that. She talks us through it all the way, which is one of the film's best points and shows the writing was right on the mark.

The dialog is easygoing too, which means they left room for improvisation as the film unfolds with people moved about like human chess pieces.

The film is more like the Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman film "Someone Like You, "whose original title, and one they should have kept, was "Animal Husbandry," about a young woman who studied male sexual loyalty. She became a celebrity after she devised an altar ego based on an academic gray-haired middle aged female with her own newspaper column. Then they wanted her to come on television!. I'm making the film sound better than it was because they didn't carry it through enough.

Fox liberally schools the people in the audience, actually the women, talking as if they were alone, which only makes the film more enjoyable. "Now to pull this off you need a 'Press Agent' and a 'Flunky'" Shante says perkily, picking out a target so her man's boys can run back and tell him all they saw.

"Contrary to popular belief, men are bigger gossips than women," she says. "That's right!" someone in the audience blurts out.

Watching "Two Can Play That Game" is like attending a showing of pre-video "Rocky Horror Picture Show," where the dialog is completed by many at the showing and you have to strain to hear the words. Still, watching this movie with a predominately female crowd is ...interesting. There was a critics the week before that I skipped, because this is a movie you want to watch with your own people, in Real Reel world conditions.

When Anthony Edward's Tony lays down some cautionary rules, such as "I'm 29 years old and I never knew a woman who wanted to pay for the dinner!" there was s chorus of "That's rights" heard around the theatre. There was a video by a girl trio called "Coothcie Got 'im Crazy" (the song, not the group). The video was about whipping a man using Sex as a weapon. John Singleton was criticized by some Black women becasue they saw the real message between the lines of his "Poetic Justice" starring the late Tupac shakur and Janet Jackson. In it Black women are shown acting dysfunctionally and abusing "the Power of the Boo-Tay," as one its philosophers and proponents says, whose convertible has "BOO-TAY" as her vanity license plate.

The battle of the sexes was exemplified by the Peter Sellers movie of the same name, where he turned the tables on a ball-busting female executive. These type movies gained acceleration in the late 1940s and 1950s when women started taking on greater prominence in the workplace after filling in for many of the jobs men traditionally had during two World Wars.

Of course Black women always worked outside of the home wiping up floors and their employers' baby's behinds, so the You've Come a Long Way Baby! sentiment left them somewhat cold.

Thus the film "Two Can Play That Game" is not focused on gender struggle so much as personal oneupswomanship as the two Buppies battle to save face and their relationship.

Chestnut is reunited with Gabrielle Union, his love interest from "Brothers." She is one to watch as well; she has a healthy athleticism about her and although her comedy skills are untested -- things happen around her and to her, but she doesn't engage in much comic antics herself-- Union has several film roles lined up just for her after "Bring It On."

The ensemble cast includes Wendy Raquel Robinson; Tamala Jones; the comedian Monique; Ray Wise; and Bobby Brown in a small walk-though. The other women besides Fox and Union are just background characters to bounce things off and are little more than a chorus and comedy relief. Fox gets the major screen time and this is properly her movie, as it should be.

Viveca's still the bigger star after "Soul Food," and as a bank robbing teller gone bad in "Set It Off;" and the saviour of the injured first lady and dozens of homeless and stranded citizens leading an exodus from a destroyed Los Angeles in "Independence Day."

Fox's sexy and comic turn in small films such as "Booty Call" and the unbilled supernatural hunter in "Idle Hands" makes Fox an all around actress, adept at action, drama and comedy. Women like her because she's down; with a smartness about her with a professional woman's demeanor but with an underlay of street smart steel. And she's nice eye candy for the fellas, too.

All in all "Two Can Play That Game" is vastly enjoyable; just make sure you don't sit in front of a row of Sistahs who are all friends. The whooping and hollaring back at the screen is infectious, and the fellas got their in as well, because the film isn't all Viveca, although it revolves around her and she's the principle narrator.

One thing I don't understand is the gratuitious use of a White man as a suitor to make Keith jealous. This introduces an element into the movie that throws it off. These films don't need integrated casts; "The Best Man", "Soul Food" and "Waiting To Exhale" all proved that. People went to see these crossover hits anyway.

"The Rules" book on how to get a man engendered some controversy earlier this year because it seemed to make the process of dating seem mechanistic. But this is reality; there are rules and those who work them the best get the spoils. There are many women who don't understand how other females can say there's a Man Shortage; they seem to always have more than their share. Because they know the rules!

But the film is more about salvaging a relationship and establishing hegemony; and that's the core because neither Keith nor Shante is willing to give way.

"Rule No. 1: Never Call First. The first one to call loses ground" advises Shante on her Ten Day Plan on how to tame your man after he's messed up. There are others, such as "Always Punish Your Man after he's messed up, no matter how small. Men are simple; they only understand pain. No Pain no gain!" she chirps.

The men have their own rules as well, but they're saving them for the next film I guess. The tables are turned back and forth, and the brothas got some whoops in of their own when Shante gets the long face when her plans blow up in her face.

One male rule they let slip is about how all the true top Players are in church, and not just behind the pulpit. The movie reveals something all men know -- some men go to church to hunt because that's where all the women be at.

One of Keith Fenton's homies tells Anderson's Tony something he missed: "Sure, they are! The same women you see Backing That A-- Up in the club Saturday night are the same ones you see in church Sunday morning singing 'Hallelujah' in the choir."

The film is loaded with these gems, and the guffaws come easily and fast. I'm ready to see it again so I can get all the things I missed from the lines that were cut off during the laughing and screen-back talking.

"Two Can Play That Game" is rated R mostly for raunchy talk, and is from Screen Gems, and directed by Mark Brown.

Have an opinion on the movies? Email at walkernet@lycos.com; Snail Mail to: Kevin J. Walker at P.O. box 1324-53201, (414) 454-9673; Fax: (551) 859-7067. See these complete reviews at: http://cinemaviews.tripod.com, and http://www. blackwebportal.com. --kjw

VIDEO VIEWS by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

More Black Love Videos from the Vault:

"Hav Plenty" of Love

in Modern Screwball Romantic Comedy

by Kevin J. Walker

It was so refreshing to see "Hav Plenty," a romantic comedy that is being favorably compared to the original screwball comedies of the 1940s starring Audrey Hepburn and/or Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant.

Christopher Scott Cherot, the talented writer/director/actor has also been mentioned as being akin to Woody Allen in his subject matter and how he provokes laughs and sympathy out of us by making himself the fall guy.

Its like "When Harry Met Sally" and its central theme: can't men and women just get along? Or is mutual attraction an integral part of the friendship between some men and women? The movie is also about coming clean, and not letting your Own True Love pass you by.

"Hav Plenty" is a wonderful blend of intellectualizing, humor, conversation that upholds ideas, and books; like a safe harbor for thinkers. This will disappoint some filmgoers, but really this movie wasn't intended for them anyway. If they watch carefully, they'll find the buried disses sprinkled in the film. Cherot clearly doesn't care two snaps for lowbrow attitudes, and doesn't suffer fools gladly.

The female lead of Havilland played by Chenoa Maxwell is a real find. A classic beauty who almost gave up acting, she is a joy to behold in every scene she's in, even though she has to play a restrained cold-hearted queen bee with an itch.

The movie was spawned from an actual weekend experience by the writer/director/actor Cherot, who took over the star spot when the selected actor dropped out of the production two weeks before. Since it was his story, Cherot stepped in, and does a passingly good job, helped along by superb yet simple subject matter, crackling dialog and a good paced plot that winds along chiefly inside Plenty's friend's house.

Cherot has a tendency to try and not look at the camera too much, but it's slight. Harder to understand is why part-way through the movie he starts to confidentially address the audience, like Kenneth Branaugh's Iago opposite Laurence Fishburne's "Othello." This stuck out like a sore thumb. It should have been made integral from the beginning, or dropped entirely.

But this is a minor quibble in a movie that I found very enjoyable despite some glitches and rough patches here and there. The title is somewhat of a trick one inspired by a verse in Philippians 4:12 that goes like "I know what it is like to live in want, and I know what it's like to have plenty... "

Lee Plenty might be called a loser by some. Certainly the Buppies he's thrown in with over a turbulent New Year's weekend would consider him so. Suffering writer's block, the would-be NYC writer who house sits (when he isn't living out of his car), accepts a stuck up career-minded lady friend's offer of a trip down to Washington, D.C. because she doesn't want to be stuck with her stuck-up folks.

The movie is firmly rooted in upper-middle class life and refreshingly free from standard po' folks ghetto stories, which we've seen enough of.

Havilland and Lee Plenty are just friends, but we wonder about the past, especially when we see some friction between them. This is when the movie started to remind me of "When Harry Met Sally." Lee doesn't back down from verbal ripostes at the expense of his hosts when they try to flaunt their achievement --and his lack of it-- in his face.

"Don't give me any of that 'broke artist b.s.' " Havilland warns Lee, after she drops names all over of her party visits to David Dinkins,' Quentin Tarantino and Eddie Murphy's houses. "Hav Plenty" has plenty of good dialog that seems lifted from conversations I've had, and Cherot's ear for language and direction of the ladies' scenes also is life-like, which means he probably allowed some judicious ad-libbing.

"Well, he's a sahcastic bahstard" drolls Hav's friend, the wannabe French-spouting seductress Caroline Gooden, an audience favorite who is the foil of the film after Lee Plenty. Still, after quizzing Hav and getting the OK, decides "I'm going to have to make that move on him..."

After her clumsy couch entreaties are rebuffed, she tells Hav, opining "He must be gay."

"He's not gay," Hav responds.

"But how do you know?"

She fixes Caroline with a glance. "He's not gay."

Asked by one why he turned down another of the women, Lee responds with one word and a shrug: "Taste."

"Waiting To Exhale" and its three-out-of-four flawed immoral females can't hold a candle to the well-fleshed out actors in "Hav Plenty, and women carry the bulk of the film with the hapless Lee Plenty as the catalyst for introspection, broken and healed relationships, new beginnings and unhappy endings.

"HAV PLENTY" is rated "R" for adult language and plenty of sexual situations but of a pleasant Lite nature.

Have an opinion about film, this column, or a favourite actor? Release yourself, and lets kick the knowledge here in the column. Write, call, or e-mail to: Cinema Views, P.O. box 1324-53201 Milwaukee, WI USA 53201, (414) 454-9673; or through our Web page sites cinemaviews. tripod.com, or http://www.GeoCities.com/walkerworld_2000.

--30--