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A glossy romantic comedy,
The Best Man centers on four college friends and the women in their lives, all brought back together for a wedding. Taye Diggs (
How Stella Got Her Groove Back) plays the title character, a young writer whose first novel is a barely fictionalized account of his college days, featuring barely fictionalized versions of all his friends. This novel hasn't yet been released, but ambitious TV producer Nia Long (
Soul Food) has snagged an advance copy in the hopes of getting an early interview with Diggs. Unfortunately, when this advance copy begins circulating among the college gang, they discover it reveals some secrets that may have a disastrous effect on the wedding.
The Best Man features a handsome, charming cast and a propulsive story, but the female characters are poorly developed and the male banter is, to say the least, chauvinistic. This banter is mostly to comic effect, but by the end it still leaves a sour taste that the movie's happy ending doesn't counter. With a particularly strong performance by Terrence Howard as an aimless but relentlessly honest member of the college quartet.
--Bret Fetzer
A sleek and somewhat sophisticated ensemble comedy by first-time writer-director Malcolm Lee. His frankly commercial idea-a "My Best Friend's Wedding" type of movie with some "Big Chill" background and Woody Allen references-concerns a group of reunited college friends, one of whom has written a novel based on their lives together. There's the standard lap-dancing bachelor party and who's-been-faithful-to-whom fodder, but the great-looking cast-Taye Diggs, Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, and particularly Terrence Howard (who steals the movie with his doggin' around)-turns it all into a finely tuned date movie. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
