Release Date: February 7, 2003
Starring: LL Cool J, Gabrielle Union, Essence Atkins, Mel Jackson, Meagan Good, Yuri Brown
Directed by: Gary Hardwick
Written by: James Iver Mattson, B.E. Brauner, Gary Hardwick
Distributed by: Universal Pictures (Focus Features)
MPAA Rating: R (sex-related dialogue)
It feels as though there's little point in criticizing how unabashedly cliché romantic comedies have become. Studios continue to grind out more Pretty Woman and 10 Things I Hate About You replicas, but not many people (both those buying tickets and the ones responisble for making these movies) seem to have noticed that the genre is foundering because of the utter lack of new material.
Gary Hardwick (The Brothers)’s romantic comedy Deliver Us From Eva has a one or two blessings, but it, too, is regretfully uninspired. Like many of its counterparts, it scrapes the bottom of the idea barrel and comes up with very little of anything that audiences haven’t seen in a dozen other similar movies.
But we'll talk about it anyway. Eva Dandridge (Gabrielle Union) is a cold-hearted, overpowering woman with no regard for how she's ruining the lives of the men involved with her three sisters. Since the girls’ parents died, she took it upon herself to take control of the family and even though everyone is now grown up and living on their own, Eva remains in control of everything. The most frustrating thing is that her sisters obey her every word, making the lives of three common men a living torture.
Eva is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the last person you'd want in control of your life. With an irritating level of arrogance, she tells her sisters how to deal with their men and drives the males in her own life insane. Union pulls off this wicked role quite effectively, making viewers almost want to jump through the screen and strangle her.
So when Ray (LL Cool J), an undefeated “player,” comes into the picture, it brings quite a sigh of relief and the hope that he can turn the evil Eva into a caring person. Or, at the very least, get her to move far, far away from her sisters and their husbands, who have all chipped in to pay him $5,000 to accomplish that very task.
As you can probably imagine, we have another variation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew as applied to the modern romantic comedy formula -- a completely unlikeable (but attrative) woman is set up with a guy (likely by a bet of some sort with his friends) and though the two seem incompatible at first, they end up falling in love, forgetting the past and living happily ever after. And despite its quirks, Deliver Us From Eva is far from atypical when it comes to presenting this pattern of events.
The three men Eva terrorizes the most (played by Dartanyan Edwards, Duane Martin, and Mel Jackson) have solid chemistry together -- whether it's by their own account or solely out of pity for what they have to put up with is left up to the viewer. Either way, they make an entertaining contribution to the film, along with their magnetic co-star LL Cool J.
These positive things work together surprisingly well through the first act, but then the story trips over itself as the writers -- Hardwick, James Iver Mattson, and B.E. Brauner -- try to make Eva, whom the audience can’t stand in the beginning, into a more sympathetic character. Union does well in playing this two-faced character (there's no question she has talent as an actress), but it doesn’t quite work for those of us watching from the outside, where we’d rather continue to hate her instead of suddenly start hoping there’s a happy ending for her. Maybe if two seperate movies were made for each side of Eva’s personality (or it was revealed that she had a more benevolent twin sister), then it would have been easier to believe her love for the suave, sensitive Ray was genuine.
Deliver Us From Eva is only one movie, though, and it doesn’t stand out at all in its class. It also doesn’t benefit itself with an unbelievable and emotionally devoid turning point in the final act. However, that might not be important to most of the women in audience, who will likely be amused by all of the movie’s despairing men. But for the rest of us, there’s less to appreciate.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)