{"id":31431,"date":"2014-06-23T09:55:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T13:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=31431"},"modified":"2014-06-23T09:55:10","modified_gmt":"2014-06-23T13:55:10","slug":"think-like-a-man-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2014\/06\/think-like-a-man-too\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThink Like a Man Too\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2012 brought us \u201cThink Like a Man,\u201d a painful romantic comedy that served as a two-hour commercial for a book of dubious relationship advice by comedian Steve Harvey. The film told the stories of four couples in rocky relationships. All four stories followed pretty much the same formula. The women used the book to secretly gain an advantage over their men (because the book supposedly has that power). Then the men used the book to secretly gain an advantage over the women. The women found out that the men were using the book to manipulate them, which made them feel used. The couples broke up, but then they got back together like clockwork. Actually, the selling point of the movie wasn\u2019t the relationships or even the book, it was Kevin Hart as a mutual friend of the men \u201cprovided comic relief\u201d at every opportunity. And by \u201cprovided comic relief,\u201d I mean he acted like an obnoxious little twerp in the way that only Kevin Hart can.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now comes \u201cThink Like a Man Too,\u201d which sees all the couples in Las Vegas for a wedding. All the relationships are tested over the course of the weekend, but there\u2019s hardly any attempt for profundity this time, just a straight-up Vegas romantic comedy. There are bachelor and bachelorette parties, casino gambling, a desperate need for cash, club dancing, arrests and all manner of trouble with the wedding itself. Almost all traces of Steve Harvey and his book are gone, save for an admittedly clever way of shoehorning him in during the film\u2019s epilogue. But if the movie is going to break so much from its source material, why make it at all? My guess is because it gave the actors an excuse to goof around in Vegas.<\/p>\n

Here we go with the breakdown of the storylines: Michael (Terrence Jenkins) is getting married to Candace (Regina Hall), even though his mother (Jenifer Lewis) doesn\u2019t care much for the divorcee who is already a mother herself. Jeremy (Jerry Ferrara) is scared at the prospect of having a child with his wife Kristen (Gabrielle Union). Zeke (Romany Malco) is scared at the prospect of proposing to his girlfriend Mya (Meagan Good), especially with Sin City constantly reminding him of how much fun he had in his promiscuous early days. Dominic (Michael Ealy) and Lauren (Taraji P. Henson) are considering taking jobs thousands of miles apart from one another. Bennett (Gary Owen) and Tish (Wendi McLendon-Covey, who was in \u201cBridesmaids,\u201d so she\u2019s been to this wedding comedy dance before) are a boring couple who take advantage of this rare opportunity to let loose. And yes, Kevin Hart is back as Cedric, the annoying friend who takes it upon himself to direct traffic as the best man. This is the kind of movie where the writers think that bouncing around between multiple storylines will make people forget that none of them are interesting. Few people, if any, are going to be fooled by this tactic.<\/p>\n

I almost considered giving \u201cThink Like a Man Too\u201d a star and a half just because it\u2019s so inoffensive. I\u2019ll even say that the odd joke does land, usually involving the lame-o couple (there\u2019s a curious running gag involving the husband wanting to go see \u201cJersey Boys\u201d on stage and everybody shooting him down; meanwhile this movie is opening on the same weekend as the bombing movie version of \u201cJersey Boys\u201d). And unlike its predecessor, it doesn\u2019t have anything questionable or dangerous to say about relationships because it doesn\u2019t have anything original to say about relationships. But because it is so unoriginal, there\u2019s no reason for this movie to exist aside from money-grubbing reasons like brand recognition and Kevin Hart\u2019s inexplicable star power. Speaking of Hart, the real reason I give this movie one star is that anything remotely funny about it is cancelled out by his grating presence.<\/p>\n

One Star out of Five.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink Like a Man Too\u201d is rated PG-13 for crude sexual content including references, partial nudity, language and drug material. Its running time is 106 minutes.<\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2012 brought us \u201cThink Like a Man,\u201d a painful romantic comedy that served as a two-hour commercial for a book of dubious relationship advice by… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}