Brown Sugar
Dre (Taye Diggs) and Sidney (Sanaa Lathan. "Love And Basketball") have been friends since back in the day, when they met watching rappers freestyle rhymes in the local park. Years later, their friendship still stands, with Dre a talent scout for a music company, and Sidney a leading hip-hop journalist. When they reconnect in New York after years on separate coasts, both of their lives have changed. Dre is about to be married to a lovely young woman (Nicole Ari Parker, "Boogie Nights"), and Sidney tries to fight off the long-dormant feelings she has for Dre. While trying to find out what happened to the hip-hop of old, Sidney struggles to understand her tricky situation with Dre, which just so happens to be eroding exactly when Dre discovers his attraction to her.
"Brown Sugar" is a celebration of love, and a mourning of the death of hip-hop music. It is the second film from director Rick Famuyiwa to explore the roots that tie African Americans to hip-hop, the first being his 1999 comedy "The Wood." Famuyiwa obviously has a fondness for the early-80s era of street corner rhymes and break dancing, and he translates that love without a drip of sweat. "Brown Sugar" is more about the loss of dignity that hip-hop is currently going through, and how that loss parallels the ascent into adulthood for most individuals. It's fascinating to watch Famuyiwa fiddle around with this theory, but he loses his control on the subtext because, in the end, "Brown Sugar" just aches to be a tepid romantic story.
And there lies the ultimate weakness of the final product. The romantic "A" plot is so clearly hackneyed, so remarkably uninteresting, that it's a real endeavor to sit through. Famuyiwa doesn't assist his film by making the hip-hop "B" plot strong enough that it towers over everything else he has to offer. The most discouraging part of "Brown Sugar" is that it appears Famuyiwa truly seems to believe that he's doing something different with his romance, something that the audience can't see coming from a mile away. He's wrong, and the film suffers for his naiveté. Maybe he was too blinded by the power of his two leads (as he should be, they are both excellent here) to realize that there is precious little surprise to this drowsy story. The same lackluster effect was in play in the recent "Sweet Home Alabama," and while the two films couldn't be further apart, they do share a storytelling quality that suggests laziness when attempting to mount what should be a sweetness, but instead comes off as laborious instead.
With so much already accomplished in the first hour in setting up character and tone, Famuyiwa drops the ball when the focus becomes solely about Dre and Sidney going through the motions over hooking up for good. You don't need a doctorate to figure out what going to happen, but the crucial fun factor isn't there to support the formula conclusion. "Brown Sugar" is most compelling when Famuyiwa is trying to communicate his feelings about the music world and relationships, and not in the formulaic vessel that carries this tale.
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