BP Throwback Flick

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 Love Jones stars Nia Long (Nina) and Larenz Tate (Darius) as two bohos who find love, sex and consequences in Chicago’s poetry scene. Screenwriter Theodore Whitcher has basically fallen off the planet, as far as anyone knows. This is another one of those good-to-decent black films about black folks as real people that you rarely if ever see on TV, cable or otherwise. But I’m sure you can cop this from your bootleg dude, or otherwise on DVD.

 I love this movie because a) if ever I had female company, all I had to do was put the soundtrack on and POW! The panties FLEW OFF, son.  And 2) this is the first time we really get a good glimpse into the black arts niggerati. I mean, aside from spray-painting walls and spinning on our heads, Hollywood doesn’t know that black folks express themselves in other ways. So to see two black arts professionals reading poetry in a jazz club is kind of incredible. Points for that. Also, points for not making this a “black film.” This isn’t a “love thang:” it’s a romance. I think Jones is classified as a romantic comedy in some circles, but that’s because white Hollywood has a problem taking the idea of vertical black love seriously.

The big knock on this film—besides the fact that it made EVERYBODY think they were poets– is that it ends up just where you know it will, which kind of negates its title, in a way. A jones is a painful want you can’t shake: a hurt so good that feels so right that you must take flight, less it take you overnight, y’dig? So when Nina and Darius find each other in the end, it doesn’t ring true. It don’t feel right. I would like to have seen this film written as like a tragic collision of passion, romance and consequences like Henry and June. I know that black folks love this film like they love they mama. But as it stands, I am probably the only black person in the world really ambivalent about this joint. It’s worth owning, but just.

This story is filed under: The Screening Room

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