The format of this film has been done before a million times. The beginning starts out with the narrator’s death, in fact throughout the film I kept thinking of that Martin Lawrence film from 1996, A Thin Line between Love and Hate. I guess I could have thought of Sunset Strip from I believe the 50s, but this is an African-American film with almost an all African-American cast, like the Martin Lawrence film. Then the premise of paying one guy to date the evil uptight sister is centuries old, can we say Shakespeare? So this Gary Hardwick directed film is hardly ingenious or unique. The ending is par for the course in stealing from old stories.

We begin this fairy tale with the funeral of Ray Adams (LL Cool J, Rollerball) a real player. He is explaining he is dead because of the three not so remorseful guys, Mike (Duane Martin, Any Given Sunday), Tim (Mel Jackson) and Darrell (Dartanyan Edmonds) in the front row. Then he explains the Dandridge sisters (their wives) Kareenah (Essence Atkins, How High), Bethany (Robinne Lee, National Security) and Jacquie (Meagan Good, Biker Boyz) are at fault, but more specifically their sister Eva (Gabrielle Union, Abandon) is the reason he is dead. Now we learn that these sisters are very close and whatever Eva says they do. Their parents died when she was 18 and she took care of them and molded them into strong successful women at the expense of her own dreams. So Mike, Tim and Darrell feel threatened by Eva and talk Ray into dating her, having her fall in love and lure her out of town before dumping her. He needs the cash so he agrees. But in any romantic comedy he ends up falling for her after he sees the real woman underneath all that posturing. The irony is if they would have left things alone, Eva would have taken that job promotion and moved to Chicago, but then Ray would not have had a story to tell. The good news is we have a knight on a white steed literally ride up and take the fair maiden away. Yeah we have heard this story a million different ways, so what is different with this one, well nothing. But is has lots of laughs and for those romantic saps, a happy ending.

I can take or leave a romantic comedy and this one falls right in the middle. I am not fond of the guile used, which seems to be common in romantic comedies, but the sappy ending and humor wins me over more than half way. Also appearing in this movie were Kim Whitley, Royale Watkins, Matt Winston, Ruben Paul, Dorian Gregory, Kenya Moore, Yuri Brown, Jazsmin Lewis, Mane Andrew, Aloma Wright and Kimberly Oja. I am amazed though at the amount of time an African-American woman spends in a beauty salon getting her hair, nails and face done. Well at least how it is depicted in this film. So my rating for Deliver Us from Eva would have been a seven, but I got to see LL in his drawers and I must say mmmmhhh. So I give this flick an eight on the About-Movies.com scale.

Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:46:30 AM

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