Two of the best components of a movie: love and drama. A good film maker understands in order to make a film as relevant as possible, you can’t have one without the other.
Although, the drama-filled love stories in Black Hollywood aren’t nearly as prevalent as those in mainstream Hollywood, there are those few films that present us with plots of intense love and enough drama than the cast of the Real Housewives of Atlanta.
A Thin Line Between Love & Hate
Lynn Whitfield’s character surprised Martin Lawrence’s character and the audience. She demonstrated the true meaning of a woman scorned. Appropriately titled, the movie showed that there’s a disturbingly thin line between loving and hating your lover.
Martin’s character had to choose between his old flame and his ‘forced’ relationship with Whitfield. Although, he decided he wanted to pursue his old flame, Whitfield made his life a living hell as he tried to let go.
The Best Man
Although not nearly as extreme, as “A Thin Line Between Love & Hate,” “The Best Man” presented us with a whirlwind of drama between friends and lovers. In the movie, Taye Digg’s character stirs up the past as he writes a book about his friends while in college. As the Best Man of Morris Chestnut’s character, Diggs admits in his book that he’s slept with Chestnut’s fiancé. Then the drama unfolds. Love, lies, friendship, and old skeletons create a drama-filled film.
Waiting To Exhale
Four women who suffer heartbreak, infidelity, abortion, and other issues concerning life and love can only produce a plethora of drama. Besides watching Whitney Houston in her prime acting days, we were hit with relevant situations that we’d either experienced, heard of, or would experience later in life. Terry McMillan knew this while she was writing the best-selling book that later became a blockbuster hit in theaters.
Disappearing Acts
Featuring Sanaa Lathan and Wesley Snipes, this movie is based off of another Terry McMillan favorite. Wesley Snipes character is a semi-employed construction worker and Sanaa Lathan’s character is a music teacher with ambitions of a singing career. But when they meet at her Brooklyn brownstone, their socio-economic differences don’t seem to matter at first.
Full of on and off again arguments, and PLENTY of intense sex scenes, this movie is a high on the list of love and drama films in Black Hollywood.
Poetic Justice
Yes, definitely taking it back with this one. In the John Singleton directed film, Janet Jackson plays a beautician and poet who withdraws into herself after her boyfriend is murdered by gangsters. The late Tupac Shakur plays a postman who tries to get through to her. The two experience self realization as they fall in love.
While the two go through a bit of drama, most of it comes from their two crazy friends, played by Regina King and Joe Torry.
Why Did I Get Married
Tyler Perry’s films are filled with drama. So it only makes sense that his film effort highlighting couples consists of lots of drama. Sure, the love was still there but it was hidden behind so much drama and strife. From Tasha Smith’s nagging and Janet Jackson’s emotional struggles, this movie was ‘so Tyler Perry’, but equally entertaining.
A Family That Preys
Adding Tyler Perry on the list again (remember his films are synonymous with drama), in his film that surprised some movie-goers because of its diverse cast.
The film chronicles the inner workings of two families—one upper-crust and the other working class—that become inextricably linked by scandal. Wealthy socialite Charlotte Cartwright (Kathy Bates) and her close friend Alice Pratt (Alfre Woodard), a working class woman, have enjoyed a lasting friendship throughout many years. Suddenly, their lives become mired in turmoil as their adult children, played by Sanaa Lathan and Rockmond Dunbar, began having extramarital affairs and a dark paternity secret threatens to derail family fortunes and unravel the lives of all involved.
With Sanaa Lathan’s character being both ‘bitchy and blinded,’ the movie was an intense drama-filled movie by Perry.
Deliver Us From Eva
It’s another variation of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” beginning when Ray (James Todd Smith, a.k.a. LL Cool J) accepts a $5,000 challenge to seduce Eva (Gabrielle Union), an alleged man-hater who dominates her three sisters and the men in their lives. Although a cute comedy, the movie turns into a drama whirlwind when the two fall in love but Ray must let Eva know the truth.
Cute, somewhat of a chick flick, but nevertheless full of drama.
