Brown Sugar

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.

They're both approaching 30 and have found success in their different but equally demanding careers. He's a hip-hop producer/exec, and she's a magazine editor for XXL. Their relationship is defined by their mutual love of hip-hop, and for each other. His name is Dre (Taye Diggs) and her name Sidney (Sanaa Lathan).

It was three years ago that I fell in love with H.E.R. (a girl named Katie) and offered her "Brown Sugar" as a Valentine's Day gift and for her birthday (which was two weeks later). For most who fell in love with H.E.R., hip-hop started back in the '70s with DJ Kool Herc driving around the Bronx flatlands blaring the sound of a new era on his speakers. For me, I fell in love with H.E.R., hip-hop, the first time I heard "Walk This Way" by Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith, which was recorded in 1986.

Director Rick Famuyiwa has a passion for the music, and it seems to have culminated with "Brown Sugar," a film that some have called an urban version of "When Harry Met Sally" with a hip-hop beat. Sidney begins nearly every interview with the same question: How did you fall in love with hip-hop? For her, it was July 18, 1984, when she discovered a music genre with break dancing, DJing, emceeing, and graffiti tagging - the four elements of hip-hop.

It's the passion for the rhythm and the beat that brought Sidney and Dre together as children. Early in their time in college, they both considered giving it a go at romance, but Sidney decided it wouldn't be right. Her close friend Francine (Queen Latifah) warns she's turning into a Terry McMillian character. Now, as adults with careers and goals, their romance lives have taken radically different courses. Dre has become engaged to Reese (Nicole Ari Parker), who is beautiful and not some monster as movies like this would require. There is a sense of sincerity in a scene where she and Sidney confront one another about Dre.

Dre, meanwhile, who works for Millennium Records, has been assigned by his boss (Wendell Pierce), who wants MTV rotation, to produce a pair of jokesters named Ren and Ten and who call themselves the "Hip-Hop Dalmations" - "they represent that whole unity (that's 'u.n.i.t.y.') thing." Dre quits Millennium after this fiasco and decides to start his own label by first signing Chris Shawn (Mos Def), who he believes is a real artist. Dre and Sidney both realize they have to keep their feelings for one another on the down-low, especially since she is now involved with professional ballplayer Kelby Dawson (Boris Kodjoe).

"Brown Sugar" works as a pretty sweet romantic comedy that also doubles as a metaphor for the loss of dignity in hip-hop. Sid and Dre's being in love is paralleled against hip-hop's acceptance into the mainstream, and its loss of any meaningful qualities. They both feel the beat, and the passion since that day in July 1984 when they fell in love with the same thing, and its growth over the years. But despite the over-commercialization of my favorite music genre, one thing is certain:

I still love H.E.R.

7/10

My summary of the movie is my opinion. I love this movie because I feel that Sidney Shaw is using a metaphor throughout the whole movie. She is comparing Hip Hop to her best friend Dre, both of which are alike. I find this movie amazing because of all the metaphors found within the movie, that only one can find if they look closely.

For example, when Sidney and Dre are in the store looking at something to buy for her new place, they come across a "vase" and the woman at the store explains to them that many couples enjoy that piece. Later within the movie, you see that that vase is in Sidney's house.

I also enjoy this movie because everything that is said, and everything that is done within the movie has a meaning behind it. Foreshadowing is found everywhere, you just have to look closely enough for it. Nothing in this movie is done without a reason.

Every line said within the movie is said beautifully and has significance behind it. My favourite line within the movie, that I've carried with me ever since I heard it is, "So what is the difference between rap and hip-hop? It's simple. It's like the difference between saying you love somebody and being IN love with somebody. Rap is just a word." When I heard that line, I fell in love with this movie and I had to watch it over again, and I have watched it many times. Each time I find more meanings that I missed the first time. What I like even more about this movie is that they use actual artists in the movie that state their opinion on "When they first fell in love with Hip Hop." "Brown Sugar" spoke to me. It's real. Nothing in it is fake like in the majority of movie's these days which is why I think I enjoy it so much. I recommend this movie to anyone who has a passion about something or to anyone who looks for significant meanings behind anything.

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.