It took me a while, but I took advantage of a slow Thursday to hit up Think Like a Man. While there’s no question that the movie has elements of an infomercial, in the moments when Steve Harvey isn’t imparting wisdom from various bar-mounted televisions and the characters aren’t discussing his book, the conversations between the characters feel surprisingly fresh, and the stakes of their relationships feel like the real way people sabotage themselves, rather than invented obstacles.

The movie follows a series of friends who happen to represent helpfully-delineated archetypes, and the women they begin to fall for. Cedric (Kevin Hart) is divorcing, a prospect he insists makes him happy, but is actually the source of incredible misery. Zeke (Romany Malco), a former musicians and a consumate player (he irritates his friends by making omelettes shirtless, which in his case would be a killer morning-after move for a lucky lady) meets Mya (Meagan Good), who is fresh out of a series of hookups with an utter creep played by Chris Brown, and intends to stay celibate until she knows that Zeke is serious about her. Dominic (Michael Ealy), an aspiring chef, begins dating Lauren (Taraji P. Henson), a successful career woman and the movie’s worst stereotype. Jeremy (Jerry Ferrara) is happily nesting with Kristen (Gabriel Union, who should play a sometime-stoned semi-nerd more often), forgetting to move forward in his career and decorating like he raided the set of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. And mama’s boy Michael (Terrence Jenkins) begins dating single mother Candace (Regina Hall).

There’s also a white character called Bennett, who isn’t featured in any of the movie’s trailers or posters. A happily married man, he hangs out with the main characters at their favorite bar, plays in their thrice-weekly basketball game, observes their romantic travails with tolerant amusement, and periodically dispenses clarifying advice. In other words, he’s a token white friend, a character who serves the same genuinely functional function as sassy black friends and wise black men. Because Bennett’s comfortable watching Oprah (a confession that prompts Cedric to warn him “You gotta say no homo when you say shit like that at a divorce party,” in one of several moments of minor, but sadly realistic-feeling homophobia), which means unlike the men he’s hanging out in a party van with, he’s able to figure out that their girlfriends are relying on Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man for romantic advice. And when Bennett explains, without disclaimer, shame or insecurity that he’s leaving the bar to go home to cook dinner for his wife because, shocker of shockers, he enjoys doing it, it’s a catalyst for the rest of his friends to get their acts together.
Read more

I’m going to try to catch Think Like a Man this week, so I’ll be able to report back on whether this romantic comedy, which boasts a mostly-African American cast, is actually any good. But I am very, very curious to see how the coverage of it plays out over the next several weeks, and whether any projects get greenlit as a result. Think Like a Man was on track to make $33 million this weekend even though it only opened in 2,017 theaters, or $15,369 per theater. By contrast, uber-white The Vow, which starred Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams, substantially bigger stars, opened with $41 million in 2,958 theaters, or $13,860 per theater.

So what’s the lesson going to be? Will it be that if you do the marketing right—a lot of the trailers were from the perspectives of the male characters rather than the women—men will turn out for romantic comedies? Apparently, audiences for Think Like a Man were 37 percent male. Will it be that romantic comedies with black stars can cross over? I haven’t found breakout data on the racial makeup of audiences, though the studio appears to be claiming that racial crossover is part of the movie’s success. Will it be that there’s pent-up desire for romantic comedies, or movies period, with black casts? That if you court black journalists, students at historically black colleges and universities, and similar outlets and constituencies, you’ll get exceedingly strong turnout for a movie that actually engages with the target audience rather than tokenizing it? Will it be that maybe it’s time to see if Michael Ealy and Romany Malco are viable romantic comedy stars? Hollywood was willing to do a fair amount of work with Tatum before he became both a box-office monster and started getting nice reviews from people who aren’t observant ladies like me. Maybe Ealy, Malco, and the other men in this movie have proved they’ve earned the same amount of patience?

I would be shocked if this was the movie that made the difference and made Hollywood wake up. But I’d like it to be really clear the lessons that they should take. No one should get to claim a passing grade because they burned all the copies of the test papers.