"Think Like a Man Too" is Wack (movie review)

I like Gabrielle Union, she's pretty funny. Kevin Hart is a great comedian. Megan Good is gorgeous. I loved Taraji Henson in Baby Boy, and Turtle (Jerry Ferrera) was my favourite character on Entourage. Lala is stunning, Regina Hall is still beautiful, and Terrence Jenkins is really growing as an actor. Dennis Haysbert...what a sexy gentleman, and Romany Malco is a cutie.

That's it. Those are the only positive comments I can make about this waste of a movie. "Think Like a Man Too" was super boring, and incredibly wack.

I swear, the first movie had me in TEARS with laughter. It was fabulous. It was fresh, it has a stacked ensemble cast of so many of my favourite Hollywood faces. I loved the characters, I loved how clever and witty the script was...I loved everything about it. That movie--much like the book of the same name, by Steve Harvey--was a hit.

What sucks is when a movie has such strong characters, and such likeable personalities, and it still falls flat. It sucks when the storyline develops so nicely and in such an entertaining manner in the first installment that you can't wait to see what happens next. The sequel has always been a tricky thing...there's a fine line between following up with another blockbuster...and then just falling.

This movie fell. Hard.

Yeah, Kevin Hart's been the man on the comedy scene for the past few years, but by the end of this movie I was kinda over him. During sentimental segments and other conversational scenes, his voice as the narrator was the supreme vibe killer. Yes, he's a funny dude. He's hilarious. But his two cents every few minutes kinda took away from the overall plot advancement. It was real annoying, actually, which sucks because Kevin Hart is supposed to be likeable.

At it's core, there was a nice story about a group of friends and an overbearing ridiculous mother (played by who else, but THE overbearing ridiculous black mother in EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN MOVIE...Jenifer Williams) who travel to Vegas for a wedding. And...of course, nothing goes as planned.

This movie has been done. Many many times. So many times that any average movie goer's standard for fun Vegas wedding movies has a bar set real high. We've seen better fight scenes, and better gambling debacles...we've seen people run up expenses and "hope" to win the money back. We've seen people accidentally getting high/drunk, and getting themselves into predicaments. We've seen the jail scenario where (phew) someone comes to bail them out just in the nick of time.

This movie was absolutely unoriginal and not even remotely funny.

To make it worse, they kept inserting these ultra-deep conversations about love, and marriage, and having babies, and "are you ready to be a father?" (great chatter for the strip club, by the way), and male pep talk...and then there's the shy girl who goes WILD! Like it was just a mess of messages and intentions, really poorly executed on so many levels.

And just when you think the shit couldn't be any more unbearably boring and random....DRAKE has a cameo?! W.T.F. It wasn't even shock worthy, it was like...real unnecessary. He's hanging out with Kevin Hart's wife back home, and the fact that the wife is Wendy Williams just made it all cringe worthy. I was so confused.

It was like a Tyler Perry movie. Yup. That level of predictability and anticipation and the inevitable letdown...and then a collection of fabulously talented actors coerced into being a part of a terrible script.

On the surface, this movie looks like the bomb. It should have been yet another classic. It should have had me laughing, and wondering what was going to happen next. It should have had me invested in the characters and their well being...but there was too much going on, too many conversations, and too little action that it was really just a waiting game for those credits to roll so I could go back to my yard.

I'm not sure who wrote this movie, and truth be told I don't even care to Google it. I'll let the poor writer/director save face. It just sucks that these actors didn't have a better movie to work with.



Written by Stacey Marie Robinson for Kya Publishing's "Urban Toronto Tales" blog.