Come fare l'amore con un negro senza stancarsi

This is one of those movies that you come across on the bottom shelf of your local video store, covered in dust from not being touched in years. You look at the title, close your eyes and open them again to make sure that you're not dreaming, and look at it again in unadulterated disbelief. You bring it to the front of the store and sheepishly present it to the video store clerk (or, in my case as I work there, hide the fact you're taking it home out of embarrassment), and pray to whichever God that the employee doesn't give you a quizzical look. But he does. After all, you're renting a movie that: a) Is called "How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired" and b) renting a movie that no one has even looked at the box since the store acquired the tape.

This is one of those movies that you bring home and you already know that it's going to be bad. Hopefully a good sort of bad? You're still praying to your God at this point that there will be at least an inkling of unintentional humour in it, and that your hard-earned money won't go to waste. But as soon as you pop the tape in to your VCR, you're already regretting it. It's too late, though. Within the first few minutes, you can't believe that you spent $5 to rent it. $5 down the drain, to watch a movie contaminated with casual slings of the "N" word by the white characters, and casual dismisses of such language by our two protagonists, who are more stale than last week's bread. You immediately notice that there isn't any attempt at even a half-baked plot, and that you're just watching a group of jackoffs ramble about jazz and stoner-quality philosophy for 90 minutes.

For some reason unbeknownst to you, however, you can't stop watching it. Maybe because you can't believe you spent $5 on it and don't want it to see it thrown in the trash? Or maybe because you want to see how prolonged this disaster of a movie can go on. Or maybe because you're watching a movie called How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, and only for that title alone. In whichever case, your prayers to your God have gone unanswered. There is nothing of quality within this movie, and once it's finally over, and you're looking it up on the Internet, you see that the main character of Claire Denis' acclaimed film Chocolat is the star of this trainwreck, that the secondary protagonist is now a politician for the Bloq Quebecois, and that Canada's own National Film Board was responsible for it's distribution. And right there and then, you reject your religion as there is no god who would ever allow this to happen.

I loved the characters and the humour in this 80's movie.

HOW TO MAKE LOVE TO A NEGRO offers an even more offensive French title, where "negre", a term identical to the banned English racial slur ni... is featured, presumably since "negre" also is a pejorative slang term for writer, the occupation of one of the "negres". However, from the very beginning it is obvious that the use of "negres" was indeed intended to offend. (The English-dubbed Canadian VHS often voices the racial slur rather than the words negro or black. In fact, everything about the movie is offensive: the fatally-flawed theme, the boring plot, the amateurish acting, not to mention the inclusion in the cast of Roy Dupuis, one of Canada's great young actors in a ridiculous but mercifully small role. The blanket racial and sexual stereotypes will offend blacks, whites, men, women, sexual minorities, policemen, ... even the Chinese and the Japanese (who have no connection to the plot whatsoever) are gratuitously attacked during a conversation between a racist hyper-macho black man, and a racist white neo-colonialist white who, out of nowhere, comes to the conclusion that Chinese, Japanese, those... are all the same. Obviously, the intent of the filmmakers was to offend every possible segment of the population. Maybe Woody Allen and a few others can get away with that, but certainly not these pretentious amateurs. I'm a big fan of Canadian cinema, especially Quebecois films, and this is the only one of over a hundred or so I have found totally worthless, and indeed the only film I haver rated on this data base under 5. I give it a one, since no lower score is available as a choice.

No PC brownie points awarded for watching this movie. Just blunt commentary of political correctness contortionism with which so many try to cover their own faults.

This easygoing interracial romantic comedy never goes into the details of its numbskull title, but it does explain such things as the perfect temperature for listening to the music of Charlie Parker: 98.6 degrees, naturally. The film is a glossy satire of sexual attitudes and racial stereotypes, with a sunny disposition reflected in its protagonist: a would-be writer transplanted to French Canada from somewhere in Africa (on Thursdays he's from Madagascar) who enjoys cruising gullible white women. The scenario, not unlike that of any optimistic TV ad (in which everyone is young, attractive and single, and the weather is always warm and cloudless), is totally unreal, but the film is so cheerful and sometimes so witty that it's easy to overlook the occasional sexism and lack of any real story. All the women are strictly Barbie Dolls, regarded by the otherwise unnamed 'Man' as little more than willing sex objects, and they in turn see him in much the same light – which may be all part of the point, but it doesn't make the characters any less superficial.