Review of:Brown Sugar (2002)
Director:Rick Famuyiwa
Rating:PG-13 for sexual content and language
Starring:Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Mos Def, Queen Latifah, Nicole Ari Parker
Hip Hop was as much a defining moment to the history of American music as any cultural movement that had been participated in. The original sounds of hip-hop were an eclectic blend of street rhyme and cultural commentary, as well as party raps. The story of Brown Sugar is based on first the ultimate love of the music, and two the resulting relationship that grows out of it. Dre (Taye Diggs) and Sidney (Sanaa Lathan) have a love of hip-hop that seems to resonate out of their souls, and with this love their friendship grows. What more does the heart need to connect than a connecting love of something felt so deep? When something is talking to your soul, and you meet somebody who is jiving on that same level with you, could that person be your soul mate? The film asks this question, and much more.
Director Rick Famuyiwa brings this story together nicely as we meet these two friends fifteen years later. We see how the music has directed their lives with Tre being an unfulfilled music executive, and Sidney being a much sought after music critic. The music has brought them something that many people would love to have, and that is being in a job that they actually want to be in. The common link of hip-hop has only strengthened in them, and we see them as looking through a lens. "These two should be together", your mind might shout, but the direction of this film puts characters of equal quality, beauty, and strength in the middle of the road to love. With the addition of beautiful eye candy Nicole Ari Parker (Soul Food), and Boris Kudjoe (Soul Food) the choices become only harder.
The film does an excellent job of showing the struggle of these conjoining relationships, and how sometimes love is not all that is needed. People all the time are making choices based on things other than love such as; power, lust, or just somebody being in the right place at the right time. The film does cover most of these outlying difficulties that are present in many relationships. The addition of Mos Def as the young old school hip-hop wizard is a nice touch. His character brings about an essence that the film might have lost without him. The street credibility of an actual rapper, and the good performance that he adds to a good cast.
Sanaa Lathan won my approval with the film Love and Basketball, and this character she portrays is built along the same lines, although a bit more confident in her abilities with man. The romance genre might be the ticket she could ride a long way. Only time will tell.
My advice is to see this movie in any form that you can. When the only films that were being pedaled to the black populace were the street hood themes it was slightly sickening. This is a film that should be supported as much for its excellence as the romantic genre it tries to scurry across.
