I'm Through with White Girls

One night, as I was browsing through Blockbuster, I had another reason why I don't do Netflix, much to the befuddlement of my friends who are well-aware of my movie-obsessed ways. It was all in the title, I'm Through with White Girls (The Inevitable Undoing of Jay Brooks).

Maybe I might have found this jewel through Netflix, but I highly doubt it. And like buying a CD off one hot single, I rented this movie based off just the title.

Sometimes you have to take a risk, which could end up in the catastrophe of a two-hour waste of time.

Or it could end up being the best time of your life, or close to it.

I'm Through with White Girls, the first feature by Jennifer Sharp, is surprisingly sweet romantic comedy about much more than the title might suggest.

Written by Courtney Lilly, the film centers on Jay Brooks, played to perfection by Anthony Montgomery, a black guy obsessed with graphic novels and indie rock and who dates too many white women to count. As one character suggests, the only black woman he may have kissed is his mother.

But what's nice here is that Jay Brooks isn't portrayed as some self-hating Clarence Thomas, which would have been the easy road to take here. As he says in the film, he dates white women because it seems as if black women don't dig him, and in the world in which he operates, he doesn't come across many black women at all.

That is until he starts Operation Brown Sugar. After his last break-up, in which he pens his Dear Jane letter on a yellow pad while his girlfriend is in the shower, he starts to rethink the way he runs his romantic life. He decides to go cold-turkey on white women, who he blames for his love woes.

He finally finds his match in author Catherine Williamson, a beautiful woman with blue-streaked dreadlocks who talks like a Valley girl. Jay Brooks falls hard and begs (literally) like Mars Blackmon in Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It for a shot at love.

Lia Johnson, who plays Catherine, is a joy to behold on the screen. She exudes intelligence and vulnerability, and the chemistry between Catherine and Jay feels real.

Soon, Jay, not knowing a good thing when he has it, inadvertently starts sabotaging his chances with Catherine. And thus is revealed the real problem Jay has. It's not with white women; it's with commitment.

That journey to Jay Brooks undoing is a breezy one, full of insights about the silliness of stereotypes and the beauty of finding love and the freedom that comes with dance.

Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder is satire overload, often funny but sometimes way over the head of the average viewer.

Perhaps that's the way Ben Stiller, the director, wanted, and he just about pulls it off.

His latest movie centers on the filming of a Vietnam War picture, replete with explosions, tough-guy talk, gore and drooling death scenes.

The movie goes haywire when half the set is blown up and the director decides to put his self-important actors in the middle of the jungle to shoot guerrilla style.

Those actors are a bunch of has-beens hoping for redemption. Stiller is muscle-bound Tugg Speedman, an action star on the rebound from a failed Oscar bid as a buck-toothed mentally-challenged guy named Simple Jack.

Jack Black plays Jeff Portnoy, a heroin-addicted comedian known for playing all the characters of a flatulent-happy family named The Fatties. And Robert Downey Jr. is a Method-acting Australian who is so convinced of his abilities that he decides to surgically darken his skin to play a black soldier.

Rounding out the cast is Jay Baruchel who plays Kevin Sandusky and Brandon T. Jackson who plays rapper Alpa Chino, who has his own energy drink, Booty Sweat.

There's really no plot other than the actors trying to find authenticity in their characters while being chased by real thugs with real guns shooting real bullets in a real jungle.

Eventually, Tugg Speedman ends up captured and the other actors have to save him.

And chaos ensues.

In the process, Stiller has a ball skewering the shallowness of Hollywood greed and the narcissism of some A-list actors. Tom Cruise even humiliates himself in an unrecognizable role as a bald-headed profanity-spewing studio head who loves to shake his butt to crass rap songs. (Just to see Tom Cruise dance is worth the ticket price alone).

Some of the jokes either fall flat or are just too insidery for most people to get. But more jokes work than not. And the energy of the cast is enough to pull the movie through its more dull moments.

Downey is clearly the star in one of the most controversial roles. Blackface isn't something you should mess with, given the history of blackface as a way to dehumanize African-Americans for centuries. But Downey doesn't go overboard and Alpa Chino is always there to challenge him.

About the funniest scene in the movie is when Lazarus explains to Speedman why he didn't win the Oscar.

Tropic Thunder should have been funnier, should have been grab your stomach as you roll on the floor funny, but it isn't. It is, however, eyes tear up every now and then funny, and sometimes, that's funny enough.