Breakin' All the Rules
The title is disposably generic, the plot has moth holes, and the cinematography is the scuzziest I've ever seen in a film that wasn't shot using the director's father's video camera. But "Breakin' All the Rules" has something many movies don't these days: interesting and attractive people talking to each other.
Maybe that isn't much, but you take what you can get. The story line is a retooled Rock Hudson/Doris Day confection, but with a lot less huffing and puffing about it than last year's "Down With Love." The gimmick is that all the flirtatious double talk and mistaken identities have been airlifted into Buppie-land, that tension-free movie universe in which upscale African-Americans meet, mate, and crack wise while dressing and living in a state of casual swank. There's nothing remotely "street real" about "Breakin' All the Rules," and that's one of its small pleasures.
The film gets the requisite dog-pee joke out of the way before the opening credits and then heads uptown. Quincy Watson (Jamie Foxx) is an editor at LA-based Spoil magazine who gets dumped by his self-absorbed girlfriend (Bianca Lawson) and, in revenge, writes a hit book on how to break up with your significant other without creating a stalker. "Falling in love is blissful insanity," Quincy says, "but breaking up is a rational act." His rise to the top of the bestseller list appears to take about three days; believability is not the movie's strong suit.
Its strong suit, instead, is the tart, affectionate back-and-forth banter written by director Daniel Taplitz ("Commandments") and laid down by a likable cast playing it just broadly enough. Quincy's cousin, Evan (Morris Chestnut), is a ladies' man hoping to ditch his new girlfriend, Nicky (Gabrielle Union); he enlists Quincy as a conspirator, but when the latter meets Nicky at a bar for the first time she is unrecognizable in a haircut that makes her look "like Halle Berry's Yorkshire terrier." He falls for her, not knowing who she is; she falls for him, knowing just enough to know it's a bad idea.
Meanwhile, Quincy's boss, a media mogul played with droll white-guy constipation by Peter MacNicol, needs his hit author's advice on how to break up with marriage-hungry shark Rita (Jennifer Esposito). Striking back, Rita mistakes Evan for Quincy and tries to negotiate a deal using sexual favors. Best known for his turn in "Ally McBeal," MacNicol is basically playing the old Tony Randall role here; he dithers and stutters and has a lot of fun with the part, passing most of that enjoyment on to the audience.
What sounds like playa misogyny on paper is defanged onscreen by the sweet foolishness of the male characters and by the fact that "Breakin' All the Rules" simply stops and holds its breath whenever Union shows up. As Nicky, she's lovely in a girl-next-door way and equally smart, tough, and vulnerable; the dialogue scenes between her and Foxx have charm and, more important, heat -- the kind that comes from a meeting of like sensibilities. Halfway through, Taplitz lets the two play a game of 20 questions that dismantles all the lies they've told each other up to then; it's as though their attraction were strong enough to melt the conventions of the dinky romantic comedy they're in.
I don't want to oversell the movie. The second half caves in to strained farce and cheap yuks, and the film really does look like it was shot through a burlap sack. As date-night piffle goes, though, it's thoroughly engaging. If "Breakin' All the Rules" will be gone from the cultural memory banks within six weeks, it keeps you smiling for the 85 minutes it's on the screen.
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