by B.J. on 11/28/2003 09:41:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

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Love Doesn't Cost A Thing (But It Does Pay to be a Poolboy and Have Connections a Mechanic)

Haunted House was about to play, but of course 30 minutes worth of the movie is sitting down, listening to how movies cost money, watching previews, some dumb animated popcorn and Pepsi enjoy a movie, and the THX sound make its grand appearance.

The previews showed one movie in particular I cringed to: Love Don't Cost A Thing (But It Always Pays to be Yourself) <--- That crap in parenthesis is part of the movie title !

OUCH ! (Madden 96 style like Deion Sanders tackling Alfred Pupunu.)

Love Don't Cost a Thing stars Nick Cannon, Christina Milian, Steve Harvey, all of whom I have held in a positive light. Nick Cannon was the slick guy in drumline, Christina Milian was the hottest thing on the Disney Channel (6th grade, fella) and something of a pop star before the invasion of that 30-year old turned teenager Hilary Duff.

The preview starts off with Nick being a lowly nerdy pool boy and the shittiest assortment of Nelly's hip-hop hits that overshadows these selected moments in the movie. Just like in real life Nick comes across this super hotentot (actually Latina) potato Christina, and of course he can't get her and falls into a pool. However, out of a crowd of other guys, like magic one night, she looks straight at that nerdy lowly pool boy for help after crashing her car because he conveniently has connections to a mechanic (or he is rich and pays her tab or he is the mechanic, he cleans pools as the side job). Poor rich Christina does not want to pay $3000 to repair her $1 million dollar navigator, and Nick tells her that he can fix it for free if she becomes his girlfriend for a week. Then comes a cunning line where she says "don't be starin' at my booty."

Just when I was about to sink my head into both of my hands, then comes the turning point of this preview.

Nick, the lowly pool boy, who looked nothing like a "nerd" to begin with, becomes a high school hit just with the change of his clothes. He starts wearing loose velvet sweatpants which black girls obviously can't resist and suddenly can't keep the girls off him. He becomes something a chauvanist telling Christina to back off, and an echoing line while he's lying in his bed alone with the hip-hop suddenly stopped in favor of non-lyricked R&B, Christina asks, "are these the victories you want ?" The movie then becomes a springboard to a musical of life-changing proverbs to live by. Aww, look they're really just like the yuppies from Full House, Growing Pains, and Family Ties inside, but with b.a.b. (bounce, aZZ, and bling.)

At that point did I sink my head into my hands to shield myself from this horror.

Sandwiching this horrible preview and horrible looking movie are a bunch of white middle-class cunningly marketed movies (MTV-produced SAT and some other movie) which will probably tank up hardcore like Marcus Fizer building his muscles up by ritually ripping wild grizzly bears' arms off and beating them with it.

Where to begin, where to begin ?

The proposed plot and its glaring ironies (to use some verbose high-falutin English literature words) ? Sure, why not. Could not get anymore typical than this. I don't even want to type out that plot because I think my head would broil like an In-N-Out bun. The proverbs, mesage of the movie were way too obvious, and it's just a bunch of dead weight when you can't demonstrate (that line is pure hip-hop). The story and entertainment value would depend on how much 't' and 'a' Christina Milian shows.

The only effect this movie creates is reinforce stereotypes.

Who the hell did they have in mind when making this movie ? White kids ? Were the producers trying to shock those kids with the differences of hip-hop culture, but ultimately connect with them under 'universal' principles ? Cause I did not find any "connection" to that movie at all. It was horrid (and just a preview), and I hope it won't cost a thing to download it off somewhere and write a blog about what it really means someday. CD it, and then delete it.

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