Brown Sugar

Dre and Sidney have grown up friends and matured through their shared love of hip hop music. Now in their late twenties, he is an executive of Millennium Records while she is the editor of XXL. Dre's marriage sparks deep feelings within Sidney, which she battles to control. However changes in both their lives in terms of love and the direction of their relationship with hip hop, brings about choices they both must make.

Before this film had finished production I had spotted on imdb that artists such as Common, Talib Kweli and Mos Def were in this movie and I was looking forward to see it. I saw it today as my wife is a fan of Diggs and must say that I was left feeling slightly underwhelmed. As a romantic comedy it is surprisingly light on both romance and comedy. The tangled web of `do they love each other, don't they love each other' loses steam long before it reaches the end of the film and the prominence of cheating in the story is a turn off. It still sort of works but not as well or as compelling as in other films – the fact that both of the lovers get involved in marriage caused me to be less supportive of them becoming a couple (which is important for a rom-com to get right).

In terms of laughs the film is pretty thin and it only got a few laughs out of me. It is all reasonably amiable but this doesn't make it funny. The best laughs came from minor support characters rather than the main story, which is far too busy talking about hip hop or looking sad over unfulfilled love.

In terms of hip hop, I was expectant after the film opened with talking heads from many famous artists, including several whom I'll buy anything they release. However after this opening the music is only really referred to in a dull voice over by Lathan. The film does make good swipes at modern hip hop (particularly funny and barbed is The Hip Hop Dalmatians) but it is nowhere near at transferring the effect of the music as, say, 8 Mile or Slam were. The soundtrack is really lacking in strong joints and hip hop is only given the stage briefly when Mos Def performs at a show. Strange then that this film claims to be about hip hop as much as it is about romance.

The cast are pretty good even though the material is not quite as good. Diggs is not given good dialogue and his constant hip hop talk doesn't always sound natural when he says it. Lathan is a lot more comfortable and is better, although again, she is held back by a depressingly over-sentimental voice over. The two together do have chemistry and it is a shame that the plot wasn't set up better to use this. Mos Def is the star of this film and it is a shame that he is only given a little screen time. He has the funniest scenes and when he is talking to Kelby about being a rap coach and, later, romancing Francine, he shows real astute comic touches in his performance. Likewise Latifah is good and about a million times better than she was in the woeful Brining Down The house – here the support role suits her.

Overall I felt that his film didn't really succeed at anything it tried but was still watchable and quite enjoyable nonetheless. The romance was too confused by marriages etc to really work well and to get the audience behind it and the comedy never really arrived apart from a perfect performance by Mos Def. The whole hip hop thing meanwhile, could be viewed as under-served or simply a marketing gimmick depending on how cynical you are.

Brown Sugar (2002) could have been retitled Love & Hip-hop if only to simplify matters. Like Love & Basketball, it marries the tried-and-true romantic flick formula to the emergence of mainstream "black" culture. Because of these similarities and the presence of Sanaa Lathan, most viewers will quickly lump Brown Sugar into one of two pools. They will either see it as yet another "black" film about a lifestyle that was once counter-cultural and is now, thanks to MTV, cliched or as one more in a long line of romantic comedies.

This film fits into both categories but is far better than most of its fellow films. The hip-hop culture is a childhood background that has turned into a profitable lifestyle for Dre and Sid, the two main characters. Their careers are products of the American craze for pop culture but their love for hip-hop is strong enough to allow them the hope that they can somehow make a difference in the business. Films with black stars tend either to drown them with imagery of the ghetto (a la Menace II Society, Baby Boy, etc) or completely ignore the African-American element, dress the characters in business suits, and absorb them into the "white" corporate world of success. Brown Sugar does neither. Hip-hop is natural to Dre and Sid and is present in their conversations without being obtrusive. Writer Michael Elliot is wise to let them lead their lives in the corporate world without ever losing their childhood backgrounds.

In the other camp, romantic comedies generally sacrifice character development and plausibility to accomodate the dreaded near-misses, love misunderstandings, and the climatic scene where the man publicly confesses his undying love. For the most part, Brown Sugar steers clear of these pitfalls and remains true to its characters. The movie never pretends that any of its characters are perfect or indeed that any of them are ever sure of any of their emotions. This is not a fairy tale movie where characters have sex because they are in love. This film is more realistic. The characters are young and romantic at heart and for one reason or another, they find sex first. That then leads them to at least the misguided pretense of love. As one character explains it, "put a man and a woman together for long enough and something's bound to happen." Infidelity is shown as a sign of emotional uncertainty not of villainy. Even the best of the characters eventually considers it. But neither Famuyiwa's camera or Elliot's script vilify them for it. The characters earn the viewer's sympathy despite their mistakes and when confronted by their angry spouses, they do try their best to be honest and direct.

The script also avoids the kinds of contrived jealousy traps that most romantic comedies rely on. When one character finally falls for another and acts on his feelings, he is not lead astray by a misunderstanding. He arrives early enough to realize that she has managed to find love elsewhere while he was making up his mind, but too late to do anything about it. Even the public pronouncement of love is cleverly flipped. All in all, this movie should be watched by anyone who has seen one too many weak romantic or African-American comedies and needs to be reminded that a string of bad movies does not ruin a genre.

Andre 'Dre' Ellis (Taye Diggs) is tired of selling out as A&R in a hip hop label. His lifelong friend Sidney Shaw (Sanaa Lathan) is more concerned about her career as editor-in-chief of a hip hop magazine. Their platonic relationship is thrown for a loop when he tells her that he's marrying Reese Ellis (Nicole Ari Parker). He tells her that men are looking for Brown Sugar, somebody sweet enough to marry and freaky enough for the bed. She's jealous of Reese and Reese notices. Dre and Reese get married but Reese is not that happy when he quits his job to start his own label. Kelby Dawson (Boris Kodjoe) surprises everybody by proposing to Sid. Sid and Dre discover Reese cheating on him.

This is a good functional romance. Sanaa and Taye Diggs are nice actors for the roles. I like Nicole Ari Parker in her role. The hip hop industry insider stuff has to be taken with a grain of salt even though there are a couple of musician actors. It follows a certain formula and that's perfectly fine. I really like the actors and that keeps my interest.

Just watched this movie on DVD. And while I found the hip-hop commentary interesting, the love story seemed to close too to LOVE AND BASKETBALL for comfort. After the cool opening scene (featuring cameos by Doug E. Fresh, Big Daddy Kane and De La Soul) I thought maybe the hop-hip angle would dominate the love story, and for a while it seemed like it would, but the opposite occured. The "friend-becoming-lovers" angles has been done better in other movies (LOVE AND BASKETBALL, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.., etc.) and it's getting old. Don't get me wrong, the movie's not a total waste. The two leads are great, the supporting cast is good too. So if you don't mind a typical love story you just might want rent this one. Not great, but not bad as the other reviewers states.

I just loved this movie!!!! It brought back the "old-fashioned" love story. Everyone was so good in it but I thought the actor who stood out was Mos Def especially with his "Humphrey Bogart/Casablanca" analogy. It was just too funny and yet it made a lot of sense. Also his conversation with Boris Kodjoe in the kitchen was also very funny. This (to me) seems to be the first piece of film work that took hip-hop seriously and beautifully incorporated it into a love story. I was also impressed with the fact that there was no nudity and hardly no profanity.