Saw part of this on BlackStarz this weekend. It was serviceable, not as enjoyable as say, The Best Man. I got a new line from it, however: when Haviland cussed out Lee Plenty and called him a "p%#@-colored m@(*&%$>{@!"
I can use that on the ghetto security guard in my office building if he ever tries to step to me.
Here's a review from the
Philadelphia Weekly newspaper:
Hav Plenty
Having recently revisited this 1997 movie one night on one of the many Encore channels embedded in my digital cable package, it's saddening to know this movie still hasn't captured the audience it should have gotten by now. (I mean, it had an all-star soundtrack and everything!) Part of the problem was this movie was released after Hollywood swamped black audiences with such consistent farcical trash as Sprung, Woo, How to Be a Player and the notoriously execrable Booty Call. But the most primary explanation for the movie's lack of fanbase is what it basically represents: This story of a charming but homeless bohemian writer (writer/director Christopher Scott Cherot), who thinly hides his love for his upscale best friend (Chenoa Maxwell) while spending a hectic New Year's Eve weekend at her parents' house, complete with an odd assortment of supporting characters, did the unthinkable and displayed black folk as neurotic, eccentric, confused, self-deprecating, witty, vulnerable and a bunch of other stuff you'd regularly see in romantic comedies starring white people.
They were flawed, but not in the way black people are usually seen in the movies. No one had a drug problem. No one had bad credit. No one was on welfare. No one was having freaky, sweaty, unprotected sex because that's the only thing they can do while they wait for their county check to come so they can buy Top Ramen and Jolly Ranchers for their eight kids. Racial stereotypes were shattered; it was a black movie, but not really.
And of course, the movie's distributor, Miramax Films, had absolutely no idea how to market it. (If the movie starred Gwyneth Paltrow, that sucker woulda been a damn Oscar contender!) Audiences may have considered the movie too bougie for visual consumption, but it's still worth checking out. So next time you're at Blockbuster and just dying to get your hands on a copy of How High or The Wash, get the nearest Sex and the City VHS box set you can find and continually beat yourself over the head with it. And after you're done with that, go and find a copy of Hav Plenty.