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 June 2007
AND THEN CAME LOVE |
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By Wilson Morales
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Romantic films tend to be easy to either like or hate depending on who are star-crossed lovers are or if the story is too hackneyed to be believable. Hey, I’m a sucker for these films if they are tight and a level of suspense is risen. It can’t always be they meet, they fight, and they get together at the end. Sadly, but most of these films in this genre are set up this way and we just have to hope the middle part of the film is entertaining enough to hold us in our seats without predicting the end with our eyes closed. Such is the case with “And Then Came Love”, a noble attempt to make an interesting but contrived plot work, but the chemistry between the two leads isn’t there to make this film worth seeing. Vanessa Williams plays a high-powered Manhattan single mom who yearns for her son, six-year old Jake, to have a father figure in his life, disregarding the fact that her current boyfriend (Boatman) is around to do the job. Instead Julie decided to play with fire and seek out the anonymous sperm donor father (Daniels) and check his life out to see if maybe one day she can let him know about his son. With her mom (Kitt) urging her to settle down, the pressure is mounting but Julie can’t seem to give her day job and move out of the city. When sperm donor Paul turns out to be an educated brother, but an unemployed actor with no future, rather than flee, and get back to reality, Julie lets Paul hang around her until he meets Jake and offers to babysit the kid, not knowing the secret that Julie harbors. One can see where this is going, if weren’t for Vanessa William’s presence, you could stop reading and know how the ending is. While she’s on-screen most of the time, which is a blessing, the screenwriter, Caytha Jentis, couldn’t do justice for her romantic counterpart. One would have to suspend belief to assume that a beautiful successful woman can drop her current bf and fall for an unemployed, uncertain with his life, man for the sake of her child. Noble attentions aside, Paul’s current status just doesn’t cut the grade. Although he’s much younger than Julie, and capable of being a good father, Paul simply doesn’t fit Julie’s profile. The film is filled with dramatic and comedic elements, but director Schenkman didn’t know how to balance the two of them. Stephen Spinella , who plays Julie's gay best, is the voice of reason, while Kitt, is the conventional mom looking out for daughter dearest. Decades ago, Diane Keaton did “Baby Boom” in which a single mom tried to handle both duties at home and work and the film was capable of pulling it off. Boatman and Daniels are both given moments to be comedic but neither of them have funny bones and the implied scenes fall flat, as well as the film. |
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