How U Like Me Now

"How You Like Me Now" was a wonderful and cautionary tale of how not to handle a man. The film centers around Valerie (Salli Richardson) and Thomas (Darnell Williams), a young couple whose relationship burns out due to Valerie's ambition and materialistic drive that clashes with Thomas's lack of passion. Making a long story short: Valerie dumps Thomas for a white guy whom she assumes will drastically improve her lot, while Thomas ends up having his ego stroked by his boss--a woman--whom he ends up dating. Of course when Valerie returns to Thomas she finds a new man thriving without her. This film served a bit too much "stroke-a-man's-ego-to-get-what-you-want" to please a wide viewing audience. Yet its message does come across. Salli Richardson was flawless as the overly critical, materialistic, but romance-starved Valerie. Although this film falls a bit short of its mark, Darnell Williams (Thomas) and Salli Richardson (Valerie) give stand out performances of how values, based on class and gender, alter the timbre of male/female relationships--Ideas about gender and class are rarely explored in film as issues that genuinely effect the interaction between Black men and women. Although a comedy that clearly offers a heavy dose of the male perspective, this film also raises some rather serious issues. B+/A-

At times this movie was really bad and at times it was OK. It actually ended on an uptick which made it bearable. I was a hair's breadth from turning the movie off.

The main characters are four... um... friends? Enemies? Frenemies? Honestly, three of them were friends no doubt and the fourth was a pariah. It seemed his only purpose was to antagonize everyone else. My assumption is that he hung around them just to feel better about himself because they weren't doing as well financially.

These four guys were exhausting to watch and listen to with the exception of one: B.J. (Darryl Roberts). He was the conscious one amongst them. He was the only one that actually made sense when he spoke even if he went a little deep on the plight of the black man.

As for the other three guys... ugh. Deplorable. One guy was a pompous ass, another was a sophomoric skirt chaser, and the other guy, Tom (Darnell Williams)--the only one in a committed relationship--was an absolute a-hole to his girlfriend. Just watching these three doofuses in action gave me a headache.

The women characters each had their own flaws but they seemed to be better than the men.

The movie seemed to be going absolutely nowhere. It had a terrible plot and an even worse soundtrack. The soundtrack was awful from a sound perspective and from a voice perspective. The sound was horrible like it was recorded on a secondhand synthesizer and the men who occasionally sang could not carry a note.

Eventually, the movie made a turn for the better. A couple of the characters woke up while others got their just desserts. It was clearly a low budget movie but I think with mild tweaking it could've been much better.

A vast improvement over his absolutely dreadful first film. In this film, the director seems to be trying to make a statement about materialistic women. Unfortunately, the male protagonist is such a self-pitying slacker, that his girlfriend's ultimate rejection of him seems understandable. This film is strictly for die hard Salli Richardson fans.