Join us as we unpack the 2002 film "Brown Sugar," a story that walks a fine line between romantic comedy and a poignant exploration of black culture. Tune in as we delve into the complex interplay of love, friendship, music, and ambition that characterizes the film. We promise you'll gain a new appreciation for the characters, their relationships, and the soul-stirring music that underpins it.
We're throwing open the debate on whether "Brown Sugar" deserves a coveted spot on our list of classic black movies. But we don't stop there - we invite you, our listeners, to lend your voice to this debate. Does "Brown Sugar" leave a sweet enough taste to make the cut? Tune in to find out!
Join the Black Ass Movie Club
Join us as we unpack the 2002 film "Brown Sugar," a story that walks a fine line between romantic comedy and a poignant exploration of black culture. Tune in as we delve into the complex interplay of love, friendship, music, and ambition that characterizes the film. We promise you'll gain a new appreciation for the characters, their relationships, and the soul-stirring music that underpins it.
We're throwing open the debate on whether "Brown Sugar" deserves a coveted spot on our list of classic black movies. But we don't stop there - we invite you, our listeners, to lend your voice to this debate. Does "Brown Sugar" leave a sweet enough taste to make the cut? Tune in to find out!
Join the Black Ass Movie Club
You know something that's just always going to be true Queen Latifah's hair is going to be laid yes.
Brooklyn:Welcome back to the Black Ass Movie Podcast, where we are putting together the quintessential list of movies you have to watch. I'm Brooklyn, I'm TJ and this week we are jumping into the 2002 film Brown Sugar. Now, I have to admit this is one of those movies that, because of the time period that it came out, I always come. Not compare it, but I combine it with other movies. There's like there's this, there's the wood, there's best man, love and basketball, where it's like there were these four black actors on rotation and they were in everything at some point and it's like just when, just when you thought Sonata Lathan was not in the wood she shows up at the end.
TJ:Oh my gosh, I just can. I just say I love you. Sonata Lathan, if you're listening.
Brooklyn:He's very into Sonata Lathan. Yes, this is a silly question, but have you seen this movie before?
TJ:Yes, I think this is another one of those movies that I think I watched like on TV and it was the edited version and there were some things in this that I was like, oh, I don't remember that.
Brooklyn:So I feel like we haven't been doing this in the past, but I kind of want to start doing it now. If you have not seen this film, just know that going forward we will be discussing it in detail, so there will be spoilers. We don't go through the entire storyline, just more jumping into points that we like. So if you want to hear that, stick, stick around, but if not, go watch the movie and then come back to us.
Brooklyn:This movie is about two childhood friends who grow up into the music industry and have had like an on and off, but they played with the idea of possibly being together maybe a few years ago. But now they're comfortable in the space that they are, that they are really, really good friends and they are both living their lives, having their careers, having their other love interests and the Sinali thing character, sydney, is making her way back from being the, I believe, music editor of the LA Times and coming to work at double I think it's double X magazine, double X yeah, yeah, I think it's supposed to be like a full double XL magazine or something like that.
TJ:Well, no, that magazine does exist and she was supposed to be working for that real life magazine.
Brooklyn:I don't think it still exists, I don't know. I have to look that up, sorry. Yeah, then fact check that beforehand. Then the story really gets going. We're meeting up with Senali's character and her cousin, played by Queen Latifah, at this deaf jam party in Soho, and that is where we're introduced to the adult relationship of the Tate Dick's character, dre, and Senali's character. You could tell they have like a real friendship, a kinship, and he introduces her to his soon to be fiance, who he is planning to propose to that night. That evening this is maybe one of the first times. No, I'm lying. So the first time I saw Tate Dick's was how Stella got a groove back.
TJ:Oh, that was not seen.
Brooklyn:He, he was the love interest to Angela Bassett in that one, so he's just been getting around so pretty much. He's played the young pretty thing most of his young life.
TJ:I think the first time I saw Tate Dick's in a movie was the wood, the first movie I ever saw him in, and it's weird because I preferred his like younger version not him.
Brooklyn:I prefer that actor over him.
TJ:And now, knowing that all that I know about Tate Dick's, it makes a lot of sense. But I can tell that that was probably like very early in his career compared to like the other stuff he's done since.
Brooklyn:If you want to know the things that we're referring to, I refer you to Google, but I think that if this movie had been cast with non-mellinated folks, this would be considered a rom-com.
TJ:Oh, definitely.
Brooklyn:It just feels to me this movie felt a little bit more grounded than your traditional rom-com. Yes, there were a lot of comedic moments that happened in the movie, and I think most of that was Queen Latifah and most deaths character. They were kind of like the boom Comic relief.
Brooklyn:But I think that Sydney and Dre's relationship was so real. It was like a really real life depiction of what that relationship would be like A platonic relationship between a man and a woman who had this mutual love for a hip hop, growing up, going forward in their careers and still maintaining their friendship through all those years.
TJ:Yeah, it was very interesting to watch because we start the movie when they're children and then they're kind of like discovering hip hop for the first time and it was interesting to see the fast forward and them grown up in their respective lives. And then we're dropped into this moment of them coming back together and seeing each other for the first time over the course of I don't know how many years it had been within the context of the story, but it was interesting to see that, like because Senaia Leithan does something. Senaia Leithan sorry, I'll put your name is fine. There's a moment that happens when they're on the phone and she's finishing up her edit of, I think, a record when he's in the office and she calls him like baby in all of these relationshipy kind of words. And so if you're watching this for the first time, you're like, oh, they're together right, like that's what my brain thought. And then you're dropped into this party with them seeing each other for the first time. You're like, oh and wait, no, they're best friends, they're not actually like romantically involved.
Brooklyn:That's so different. It's so funny for me because I thought completely differently about it and I don't know if it's that I'm a homicide girl.
Brooklyn:So maybe I just perceive relationships differently, but in that scene, when they were talking to each other and this might be another life experience she felt like his older sister to me and as like coming, like being a little brother to multiple big sisters. It just feels like that's what it was. More it was more of a teasing, a picking that they're both in this industry, but he's like the little twerp to her more mature woman and so when those scenes kind of concluded, that scene, the scene at the party, and we get to, I think for me, when it started to hit me that oh, it's something more than that was the knowledge about each other at the bridal shower.
TJ:Oh yeah.
Brooklyn:It really illustrated to me that his fiancee at this point in the movie it was a very surface level relationship, Like it looked good on paper, Like they were and they potentially were a power couple he was this A&R exec, she was an entertainment lawyer Like that makes sense. They look great as a couple together. But when it comes down to it is what happens once that infatuation fades away and you really don't have that much in common besides. You had an infatuation with each other when you began a relationship.
TJ:Yeah, and you happen to work in the same industry.
Brooklyn:Because they don't exactly say how long they've been together, but it's been less than a year, I believe, from what Sydney said. So by the time they get married they're maybe just hitting a year.
TJ:Yeah, I was gonna say I wanna go back to the party for a beat, because there's a moment that happens when Drake introduces Sydney to his soon to be fiance and for like a split second you can see her sizing her up because she's like who are you?
Brooklyn:What are you doing?
TJ:here why? You know, my man like this and there's this whole like behind the eyes thing happening, and then she quickly realizes, oh okay, I have nothing to worry about. Like you're fine, little does she know, you know.
Brooklyn:I wonder if in that relationship between Dre and his fiance God, I wish I could remember her name I wonder if she maybe got the feeling that Sydney might be like a lesbian and she had nothing to worry about. And it wasn't until Sydney was in their space together as a couple that she realized oh no, this is actually a threat. And that's where that moment came from, because I know relationships like that where you kind of downplay someone that you're friends with, that it might not be nothing there, but you upplay the things that you're not attracted to about them to your partner just to kind of ease tensions. And I wonder if Dre did that with Sydney. But once they were in a space together it was kind of undeniable, right.
TJ:I will also say Dre seems a little dense in this movie, okay, and I mean that in the most loving way possible.
Brooklyn:Okay.
TJ:Like he's in this dead end job that he hates but like up until the moment which we'll get to in a minute is not really active in trying to pursue his dream, or he's let his dream kind of fall apart a little bit.
Brooklyn:I think I perceived him completely different than you.
TJ:It could also just be hey Diggs. Yeah, I don't feel right.
Brooklyn:Well, no, I think he did Okay. So I'm going to say my perception of Dre in this movie. It's that he is a man who is in a career that he wants to be in but has the almost. The fear of stepping out is holding him back. He's in a position of almost being like a number two where he should be a number one, but he's also and this is me playing like a lot into this like stuff that the writer probably wasn't even thinking about but I'm thinking about Dre 2002, he's a Gen Xer and it's like, just think about that.
Brooklyn:Like the idea of him starting his own record label seems like this thing. It's like, what are you crazy? You wanna go out and start your own thing? That's crazy. Talking to a millennial, that doesn't sound crazy to me, but to a Gen Xer it's like no, you get a job, you get a pension and you get benefits and that's what you do. So I feel like he's in a space that his career has taken him from point A to point B, to point C, to point D, but he should have been going down another road. So he's on someone else's path, trying to figure out the steps.
Brooklyn:He has gotten to a place. He's an A&R like upper executive at this record label that is a mega label. He is marrying this woman who is his high-powered attorney. That looks a certain way and that's the life that he's building for himself. It is very distant from where he comes from, which is, I guess, the South Bronx at that point, where he's now living downtown in Tribeca in this very sleek clinical loft and he wears these certain kind of suits and it's like but the industry, the business that he's in. He wants to create real hip-hop music but you can tell the difference between even going to that club of how real hip-hop artists see him compared to the capitalist artists see him and I think exactly and I think that's because that's the direction he was going in.
Brooklyn:So he is someone he's a black man at that point in time who is working in that space because he has to make it Gotcha. It's like I don't think yeah, because I wouldn't say he's dense and stupid and I think it's him trying to take a path that has not been laid out for him, but it's ultimately the path that he needed to be on, honestly, from the beginning. But he didn't take that path, gotcha.
TJ:Yeah, Speaking of that commercial clean thought, my least favorite characters in this movie is the hip-hop Dalmatians.
Brooklyn:Ren and Tan. Why Ren and Tan are hilarious.
TJ:No absolutely not. They were terrible and I don't even listen to hip-hop like that. I am not that person. But watching them I was like I now understand. I get it. I get why people are like that. Ain't real Look.
Brooklyn:I'm not gonna say that anyone's not real and I'm making this comparison only to talk about the times, not to talk about the artist. And I would like to be very clear about that is that you think of someone like a Ren and Tan. I'm not sure if you will know this reference, but when I think about someone like a Ren and Tan, I don't think of them as they were a group in this movie, but them with the proper production, the right PR team behind them, the right marketing team behind them, the right stylist. They are their Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow, like that's who they are. But we paint them in this picture, in this movie, as this like comical, non-talented, just so like out of touch hip hop dual. But they're a brand new group, yeah, and they're everything that hip hop isn't, but they're commercially viable. They're commercially viable, I get it and it's like I can't.
Brooklyn:What is his name? Wendell? I cannot fault his character for being like we make hits here.
TJ:That's what we do.
Brooklyn:He never told Dre that he couldn't pursue in that or he was a fool for pursuing his dream of owning a hip hop label that had more artistic artists on it for lack of a better word. But he was like but if you're going to stay here, this is what it is, and I feel like that was lit. That wasn't a. He wasn't trying to force him to stay, that was a red pill, blue pill moment. Right, yeah, no, I get it.
TJ:I think that whole narrative within this story is it's such a hot button topic and coming from my actor brain, I completely understand because I get the. This is a business and we're trying to make money and we are going to sell what sells and right now, in this moment, that sells over this other thing. It just in watching the two of them in those fucking coats, in those fucking spotted Dalmatian coats, and watching the two of them, I was just like my analytical brain can make sense of it. My artist brain cannot, because I'm like but that isn't, it's not real, it's not art. Like what are we doing? Why do we continue to put out all of this stuff? It was 2002?
Brooklyn:Yeah, I know.
TJ:Let me get off my soapbox now, but Thank you.
Brooklyn:So we've been talking a lot about Dray in his arc through this. Now this gets to Sydney.
TJ:Yes.
Brooklyn:Sydney is moving back to the city from LA. She is getting her. She's getting settled in in her new gig at the Edirin Chief of Double XL Magazine and she is also writing a book. I used to love him.
TJ:Giving very care to Rancho.
Brooklyn:Yes, it's a similar story. So, yeah, so she's working on. She's working on her book, her first book. So she's moving back from LA, she is settling into her new gig as Edirin Chief of Double XL Magazine and she is writing her first book. I Used to Love Him During that process. She's reconnecting with her old friend Dray. She is meeting his fiance. She is getting entangled in their lives as well.
Brooklyn:Just as a new friend no tea, no shade there. She is dating. She attends a bridal shower for the fiance where there is a game of that I've seen played at bridal showers before, just like how well do you know the couple or how well do you know the groom or bride or whomever? And, to be perfectly honest with you, I've never seen it played where someone who didn't know the groom or the significant other personally wasn't the person reading the questions.
TJ:I was gonna say that was a little weird for me because I was like I've been to those two and usually the person asking those questions is the best man or the bridesmaid of that person.
Brooklyn:To make it not awkward, I would have had Sydney reading the questions because she knows the answers to all of them, but I assume that like we needed that for dramatic tension.
TJ:We needed that tension for Sydney and the fiance so that she could feel some kind of way about it.
Brooklyn:My favorite character is the aunt. She is me in those situations. She was probably had her a little wine and she's like I don't know why you proves are sitting around with your Tiffany glasses. This is supposed to be to prepare her for the honeymoon, exactly, and Sydney is the only one who understood the assignment. Yes, yes.
TJ:Which was a gift that she didn't even get. Exactly that Queen Latifa's character got.
Brooklyn:I was like of course Queen Latifa would get a Leather thong, patent leather thong with a zipper down the crotch.
Brooklyn:So we move past that. We get to the night before the wedding and there is an encounter between Sydney and Dre. Yes, what I can only assume is cold feet on his part and he wants to confide in his best friend. But his best friend also happens to be the person that truly he's secretly in love with, and something that I cause. I've seen this movie multiple times before. So something I realized in the last time that we watched this is that I kind of feel like Sidney kisses him. Yes, yes, she does. In my memories of it I was like oh, like they kiss, like they have a moment, they stare into each other's eyes and they kiss each other. No, no, like she kisses his like forehead and then she kisses his cheek and then she kind of like, does that like lean under thing? Cause his head slightly nodded because she just kissed his forehead and she kisses him.
TJ:And it's very weird because usually in these types of stories it's the guy character that does it first and you're like, oh, he shouldn't have done that, because now you know blah, blah, blah, blah. But it was an interesting approach to this movie to have her lean in first, because I also feel like that kind of gives her the power of the whole situation. See.
Brooklyn:I could rock with you on that point. If the next day at the wedding, if I was Queen Latifah's character, I would assume that he kissed her, because the way she kind of like tells a story like it happened, she makes it seem like we kissed each other. No, no, you did it first. You kissed him. He kissed you back yes.
Brooklyn:But like let's tell the whole story we weren't telling. Tell the whole truth Exactly Because, ultimately, I assume this has never happened before, that they have never crossed that line before. So the night before his wedding the seed has been planted, but this is when you watered that motherfucker.
TJ:Yes, yes, the whole tree is about to grow.
Brooklyn:So kind of like the down not the downfall of his relationship with his wife is because of that night, but it definitely put a crack in the mirror.
TJ:Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, I was gonna say speaking to the wedding scene the next day with Queen Latifah in the chapel with Sydney. So this is one of those moments that when I'm watching a movie, you know when you're yelling at the TV and you're like, how can no one else see this? Or how can no one hear this? That was one of those moments, because I was like Queen Latifah is loud, she's not whispering in this moment she's speaking in her voice and it's not like they're in a resonant church.
TJ:I was gonna say it's not like a Southern Baptist church with all this carpet and padding. We're in a very much Catholic cathedral. That's just marble and stone. Everything echoes. I'm like you mean to tell me no one can hear this.
Brooklyn:No one can hear this. No one no.
TJ:Okay, I don't believe it.
Brooklyn:I don't buy it and the reason I know that everyone can hear it is because of the priest, yes, who was leaning over like what Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
TJ:And I'm like she's just standing up there at the altar with Drey and she doesn't. She doesn't bad enough. She's just looking at them the entire time.
Brooklyn:She was a fun character as well. I like the part of Reese because she didn't feel like I don't know if you remember like detail love and basketball but at the end, when Tyra Banks just randomly shows up as the guy's fiance, she wasn't a throwaway character like that, like she was involved through the entire film, even though this movie was really told from like the A story is Sydney, the B story is Drey.
Brooklyn:C story is Sydney and Drey together, and then Reese has a part of the Drey story, right, right, but she's a big part of it, yeah, and I guess, with her character, I also can't be mad at her, and that's why I think I feel like that's why I said at the beginning, I feel like this movie is more grounded than a lot of other rom-coms, because there isn't really a villain in this story, because Reese is in this marriage where she signed up for one thing Maybe she jumped into it a little bit too fast. I mean, with Drey, like both of them, they jumped into this relationship really, really quickly, but what she signed up for was that we are gonna have this life. You have this pay scale. I have this pay scale where we've, I assume, or even moving into one of their apartments that they own. At this point, life is laid out on the way this is gonna go and within the first three or four months of us being married, you quit your job.
Brooklyn:I'm meeting this person who I've only heard about who was more of a bigger part of your life than I ever anticipated. You share things with her that you don't share with me. You spend so much time with her than you do with me. When you think to go to this industry event in the middle of the day, you don't think to invite me. She maybe was busy. She maybe was busy and that's why Sydney ended up going. But I use that as an example because I know that it's happened before in their relationship just based on how things go. So when she starts looking other places for affection, I can't fault her for that.
TJ:I mean, I don't even think the like skipping ahead to the moment of Reese being caught red-handed with someone that she's been in talks with at the gym.
TJ:Like I agree, I don't think she's the quote unquote villain of this story. I think she makes choices based off of the circumstances that she's given. You know, like you said, she signed up for a marriage with Dre. That is now taking a detour because Sydney has now come into the picture and I don't think that's anyone's fault between the three of them. I think it's just bad timing.
Brooklyn:Yeah, you know, yeah, we never really get confirmation that she, depending on your definition, cheated on him, because this could have been very well just a emotional relationship, that she was just looking for someone to look at her and only her. And she wasn't getting that from Dre, because he was preoccupied with starting his own record label and doing all that and also the on top of that of the him and Sydney relationship. So that's why I say I can't fault her for it. I don't think she's the villain of the story. And then we bring in Boris Kojo's characters.
TJ:So I was going to say that there's a moment when Dre is on the phone late at night with Sydney that I think, if I'm remembering the movie correctly, happens before the whole. Well, yeah, it definitely does, because they're not together. And I was gonna say maybe that's her motivation to then act on going to dinner with someone else, because she does catch him on the phone late at night.
Brooklyn:Because this is the evening after he has quit his job and Sydney has given him money to start his new label. And he has just told her that he quit his job and he's gonna start his own label. And that's Sydney invested in the company.
TJ:And when they're on the phone. Kelby is at her apartment having coffee.
Brooklyn:Because he is checking in on her after her first date with Kelby.
TJ:So I'm like I mean it's warranted. I'm like you come in. I'm sure it was probably 3 am by the looks of it, by the looks of where we are in the movie, I'm like sure I'm going to dinner with somebody else, why not?
Brooklyn:Oh, okay. So I guess that would be really kind of like the beginning of Act Three of this movie, because this it moves really fast. It moves pretty quickly and I feel like it's kind of broken up into these kind of like bite-sized slices of life of where we are with these relationships. We meet them, we very quickly kind of understand their relationships and then we move into the disassembling of Dre and Reese's marriage and Kelby and Sydney Sydney's relationship building Fairly quickly. So by the time we get to, is it New Year's? Is that the holiday we're celebrating?
TJ:Yes, I wanted to say we do like New Year's toast when the cutaways between the two of them in the kitchen so once we get to New Year's Eve party and Kelby proposes to Sydney.
Brooklyn:We've gotten a lot of story at this point and it's crazy to me that Sydney kind of decided to step away from Dre in being as close as they are, but the moment that she got into a serious relationship with Kelby it almost echoed exactly what happened between Dre and. Reese, yeah, and it was like they bringing these two people into this situation where neither one of you were actually in love with them, because Sydney and Dre I'm sorry, sydney and Kelby couldn't have been together more than like six months, maybe six months.
Brooklyn:Maybe six months, so it almost we almost end up right at the beginning of the film again and just echo it very, very quickly yeah, Cause they're a relationship dwindles Very quickly.
Brooklyn:Real fast Very quickly and then suddenly the I guess the relationship part of the movie is kind of over because Reese and Dre reconcile but decide that they shouldn't be together and they should just call it quits, which I think is a very adult thing to do. Kelby is just gone after. Sydney gives the ring back to him and just says that she is not really in love with him enough to marry him, so he walks away. Now we're in a place where it's really just them dealing with being alone, like Dre is kind of like putting his head down, burying himself in his work and trying to get this record label off the ground and really get his artist featured. Sydney is trying to finish her book and really settling in as the editor-in-chief there, so all of that kind of just pushes out of sight Everything else.
Brooklyn:That isn't work pretty much gets pushed out of sight until assume they don't see each other again. Into that night, in the hotel room where Dre is shopping his demo around trying to get it to different editors to get people to write a review about it, and Sydney decides that she can't, because it would be a conflict of interest to give a review to an artist that's on a label that she helped found pretty much.
Brooklyn:So up until that moment they hadn't really been communicating with each other. So I think that kind of re-sparked it how they felt about each other. So when we get to the basically the end sequence, where they are just confessing their love to each other, finally it is kind of like the perfect marriage. At that point it's like they're both exactly where they want to be career-wise, there is no significant others kind of muddying the waters, and that they can actually just be together if they so choose.
TJ:And I will say that last scene when they finally decide to be with each other. It's probably my second favorite moment in the movie because it is so honest and it's so pure and it's so beautiful to watch unfold and it falls into that whole rom-com happy ending slot. Agreed, but to see it done the way that they did it, I think it's rewarding, like it's a good payoff, yeah, the like the whole. I feel like this happened in like a white movie, okay, but this whole, like on the radio show the person calls in, like I feel like I've seen it before.
Brooklyn:Yeah, I wouldn't say it's an original idea, like is played out before.
TJ:Yeah, but it was a beautiful moment to watch unfold. Yeah, and I will say I think watching it as an adult because I think the first time I saw it was I was like 16, I think Okay, but watching it as an adult, I have nostalgia of that last little section of him putting up the paper to the glass and saying do you like me? Yes, no, maybe, yeah.
Brooklyn:But it was sweet that last moment I had so many questions. I don't, you know, I didn't grow up here in New York City, so I don't know if Hot 97 typically has on editors from magazines on the air. I could be wrong, I could be a thing that happens, but it just felt like they have been hounding Sydney to get her in there to talk about being the editor of Double XL and that just feels like something that wasn't real to me. And then the fact that he was able to just walk into the studio and kind of know everybody as he was going in makes me like go back to a couple clicks back and go. Well, why was it so hard to get this out? This is the single on the radio, if you know everybody at Hot 97. Exactly.
TJ:I assume that they're all people that he had worked with in his previous job, which makes sense. That would recognize him.
Brooklyn:Which I think is what confused me about all of that, is that all the hoops he had to go? To yeah, you've worked in this industry for years now, so this shouldn't be more than just a phone call and a favor at that point.
TJ:But here we are. We had to create some kind of obstacles, you know, as a part of his journey.
Brooklyn:It's one of the plot points that is ever so slightly lazy or feels like it might have been left over from an earlier draft of the script. That it just people. We liked it, but it doesn't really make sense when you put it in there. When you put it under a microscope it doesn't really fit together.
TJ:What was your favorite moment from the movie?
Brooklyn:My favorite moment from the movie was the sign in the window Will you go out with me? Yes, no, maybe. I think that was really adorable.
Brooklyn:But if I wasn't going to choose that, I would probably say the New Year's Eve party. I just feel like it was a really great like the way it was shot, like the overlapping moments that happened in the same space at different points in time, and the night that everyone talking to each other, the things unfolding, the scenes that everybody gets to have together it's very like quick fire. I really I enjoyed that part of it.
TJ:Yeah, that whole sequence feels very much like a Spike Lee overlay, where, like it's fast cuts of, like you don't really know where you are in time, but there's this constant throughline and these things happening around it. Editing wise, I really liked that too. My favorite moment from the movie is the boxing scene, when they're in the gym, when they're going back and forth, because it's also the first time that I feel like we really get a sense of Sydney's position and it's the first time that we really see her kind of get riled up in the movie.
TJ:She's pretty calm and collected yeah like she's pretty chill the entire movie, but in that singular moment, that's when she's like I'm not taking this shit, like you're not about to approach me in the gym and like try to have this conversation in public. But I also really enjoy recent that moment too, because she's now finally saying out loud what she's been holding in up until that moment through the entire movie.
Brooklyn:At that point you really get to see both of their points of view. Neither one of them are wrong in that situation, they're both valid. Yeah, they just have very different points of view on that, and I think that if you took that exact same conversation and you put it in a coffee shop, it wouldn't be as you know just to roll as it was, because it was like in that moment they just got to kind of like infer again.
Brooklyn:Lack of a better term. They got to pound it out Like they got to hit each other while saying these things aloud yeah, yeah, okay. So it's time for the scores of this movie. So I think I'm going to give this movie, I'll give it eight perfect tens and I'll do that.
Brooklyn:Because I don't feel like it was. It wasn't absolutely like tens across the board, perfect, but and maybe this is just more from my personal point of view is that it makes me I know this is a love letter to hip hop, but it also is a love letter to New York City and Harlem and the Bronx and Brooklyn and it just it feels like a moment that happened in like, at like the turn of the century of this, just like opulent black hip hop moment that happened and it was like it was the come up of your, it was your. Russell Simmons and Kamorli Simmons were household names.
Brooklyn:It was the come up of Jay-Z and becoming like a CEO and starting the label and him and Dame Dash and Diddy and all like. All of that was happening at that moment where there was so much black goodness to look up to, and no matter how you feel about it in retrospective at that moment it felt good and I feel like it really captured that time so beautifully.
Brooklyn:It wasn't a zany comedy, it was. There wasn't a lot of. Was there drama? Yes. Was there trauma? No. And I love that about this movie is that it was truly like a human story, that it can get messy, but it wasn't messy for the point of just being like salacious. Yeah, yeah.
TJ:I would give this movie a seven and I think I'm with you on that that like it's a very, it's a really nice snapshot of the moment of like when this movie came out and the early 2000s and where we were culturally at that time and I think I think I will say that like the simplicity of the story is what I loved the most about it. We don't get movies like that we don't.
TJ:Like you said, like there's usually like trauma involved or like something the stakes are so high that it devastates the character, so something like that. And this wasn't that, it was literally. It was Boy Meets Girl. You know that that type of story.
Brooklyn:Nobody's mother was dying from diabetes. Nobody was a crackhead, nobody was in gun violence. Dre wasn't like actually like a hit man.
TJ:It wasn't anything like that.
Brooklyn:It was just these two people who worked these I won't say regular job, because there's like somewhat fantasy jobs but like they were these two educated black people who fell in love. But it was, it was messy, that they couldn't be together and they didn't want to ruin their friendship. And we go through these trials and tribulations but we end up in a really great place and I like that. So I'm going to say we're going to hold, because I think the episode kind of gives you an idea how we feel about and how we would vote on whether or not this makes it on the list. So because it is just the two of us tonight, I think it's safe to say that we're both going to say yes, this movie should go on the list.
Brooklyn:For various reasons that we've already outlined in the episode. Should we do a tiebreaker on social media? So we're going to do a tiebreaker on social media. So we're going to put the story up and you tell us if this should make it on the list and I will say this I'm going to completely invalidate our votes here and we're going to say this is 100% up to what the listener said yes, yes, yes, yes yes, we're going to. We're going to leave it up to you guys.
TJ:So head on over to the black as movie podcast, where you can find us on Instagram at the black movie.