Review: And Then Came Love

The film believes to the bottom of its execrable core that single mothers should go the way of the dodo bird.

And Then Came Love
Photo: Fox Meadow Films

Turning its back to the feminist movement, And Then Came Love believes to the bottom of its execrable core that single mothers should go the way of the dodo bird. Everyone seems to have a vested interested in the way Julie (Vanessa Williams), a columnist for a popular East Coast rag, raises her six-year-old brat, especially her soul-sucking mother Mona (Eartha Kitt), a broken record who repeatedly insists that little Jake (Jeremy Gumbs) needs a father. (At one point she walks into a room and hands Julie an article about “the epidemic of permissive parenting,” as if her daughter were the fucking whore of Babylon.) Strangely, there’s no sense that all this interference has built over time—only that it was suddenly stirred by the flash of the opening credits. This is at least one sign of the film’s colossal self-absorption, which is matched only by its warped view of the world. I get it—whatever moves that plot along!—but PATH trains do not stop running at two in the morning, and there are absolutely no theater houses in Weehawken with cornball bars located across the street. Driven by inadequacy and a desire to learn if her son’s troublemaking ways are genetic, Julie finds the Ivy League dropout whose anonymous sperm helped to make her annoying bundle of joy. You don’t need to be Julie’s best gay, played by Stephen Spinella (unintentionally channeling Hannibal Lecter throughout), to see where the rest is going, right down to the Very Nora Ephron Ending in Bean Town. What is not so easy to figure out is why Williams decided to sully her reputation in such a fashion. If anything, the former-beauty-queen-turned-singer-turned-actress proves that it is possible to do worse than Ugly Betty.

Score: 
 Cast: Vanessa Williams, Eartha Kitt, Kevin Daniels, Michael Boatman, Jeremy Gumbs, Stephen Spinella, Ben Vereen  Director: Richard Schenkman  Screenwriter: Caytha Jentis  Distributor: Fox Meadow Films  Running Time: 99 min  Rating: PG  Year: 2007  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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