She Hate Me

This movie made me think of how its premise was created. Suppose a man wanted to push the fantasy about being sexually desired by women to the extreme. How would he proceed? 1) Must be pursued sexually by many women. Certainly more than 2. Better make it 18. 2) If the women are not normally attracted to men, their attraction to him is theoretically more impressive (by some rationalizations). So make them lesbians. Better make them cute too, there is no prestige in ugly women. 3) To emphasize the premise, have the women actually pay him to have sex with him. Make it be it a lot of money. $10,000. The problem is that this premise seems obvious and silly by itself. To make it less obvious, state that the women are motivated by the desire to get pregnant. You can still slip in the implication that they want sex with him because they didn't choose artificial insemination. I got the impression that this is how the premise for "She Hate Me" was developed. It has many other subplots of interest, but I think it is based on a somewhat obvious and adolescent fantasy.

It's safe to say that most people don't like Spike Lee. He's a radical, he's racist, and a lot of people don't like his movies. That would explain the 3.3/10 rating for She Hate Me on IMDb, considering most of them haven't seen the film. Either that, or they couldn't handle everything that Lee (and co-screenwriter Michael Genet) put onto the plate. However, Lee could barely handle all of it, and it shows. There's so much for Lee to rant on and make fun of that the movie occasionally lags and feels too heavy for having way too much to talk about. At 138 minutes, it does go on for a little too long, but that's the only way Lee can fit everything he wants to talk about into his movie. Surprisingly, it all has a place, and for the most part works pretty well.

John Henry Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), aka Jack, works for a prestigious drug company whose drug for curing AIDS has just been rejected by the FDA. However, CEO Leland Powell (Woody Harrelson) performs some illegal transactions, causing Jack to blow the whistle and subsequently get fired. Not being able to get a job anywhere else, Jack's broke until his ex-fiancée Fatima (Kerry Washington) comes to him with a plan. For $10,000, he will impregnate her and her partner Alex (Dania Ramirez). He's initially reluctant, but he decides to go ahead. Soon, Fatima brings a bunch of lesbians to his place, all for $10,000 each. Jack has morality issues to deal with, but also, his former company frame him for the corrupt business practices.

From the opening credits, where dollar bills float, ending with a $3 with George W. Bush on it, you know that this movie isn't going to be easy. Lee throws in another attack on Bush later, and he tackles the subjects of corporate corruption, homosexuality, the stereotypes of black men (and women), and the importance of whistleblowing. That definitely is too much material to work with, and it shows. In the film, there's about 45 minutes with no talk of the framing of Jack that's being planned. And there's some funny comedy thrown in, that is quite funny, but makes the film disjointed. One serious scene connects directly to a funny one. It wasn't very balanced. And I could have done without the subplot of Jack's parents. It didn't really lead anywhere. And then everything boils down to a courtroom climax.

However, the film is always fascinating when Lee exposes these things. It's too much for him to handle, as I've said, but what he can throw in coherently is interesting and entertaining. The movie is one of the most entertaining of the year, and during the aforementioned courtroom climax, you're rooting for Jack, because you've been through what he's been through. You recognized the cruelty of the company, so you feel with Jack, and because he's such a normal character, you can go along with what he's feeling and everything unfair that happens to him (which is a lot). Although it's comedic, you understand what he's going through when you see animated sperm with Jack's face on it, when he's too tired to continue with the impregnation.

Mackie does a great job. He does some emotional work, and although in one place or two, it seemed like he was going by the book, he puts in a sympathetic acting job. Washington does a more realistic acting performance, but both are great. They both add to She Hate Me, a somewhat muddled but entertaining, funny (if in the wrong places), and criticizing drama. You'll either love it or be offended by it. I think the chance is worth taking. By the way, that flashback with Nixon, et al., might be the funniest moment of the year.

My rating: 7/10

Rated R for strong graphic sexuality/nudity, language and a scene of violence.

I thought this one one of Spike Lee's better movies. It had a message, it had humor, it related to the topics of today's society...acceptance, forgiveness, love, unconditional love, hypocrisy, shame... all that under one movie. And then it gave a little history lesson about the forgotten hero's (whistleblowers) man I can't rave about this movie enough. Forget what critics say ....Passions of Christ... anyway I would suggest everyone see this movie. The ending is a little weird but it's forgivable. I can't wait til it comes out on DVD this is one of those watch over and over again movies. * Side note, the acting is not the greatest but the whole movie somehow supports it. Plus come on it's all done in Spike Lee (camera angles fashion.

This movie is about a man who takes a moral choice for his work but forgets values in his private life. I can't relate to such upside down philosophy. So, "hate" is surely a word too harsh but I don't care about his life.

Nevertheless, the story raises good questions:

For one time, you see a man becoming a "sex-object" and it's great to achieve this sort of equality with women in charge. From my point of view, it's not a revolution: I always thought, that in relationships, men court but women decide! But I am not the Di Caprio / Pitt / Clooney mold, too! Thus, the truth would be that it's the sexiest who runs the relation whatever the gender! It's a tyranny of beauty then!

And as depicted in the movie, nowadays, when beauty is there, money is not far away. What can we do for money? Is everything for sell? Money leads to freedom or alienation? When you see the beautiful opening credits, you wonder..

For sure, Lee is a talented director and knows how to tell a story, even disturbing for your beliefs.

PS: and don't forget FRANK WILLS, a man who stayed true to his principles instead of money!

The reviews of the new Spike Lee joint went from bad to worse (Entertainment Weekly gave it an F, for whatever that's worth), so I purchased my ticket to "She Hate Me" with more than a little bit of trepidation. Admittedly, what allowed my curiosity to get the better of me and coerce me in to shelling out the AMC 25 Times Square's ridiculous $10.50 ticket price was an inner desire to witness the gruesome end to the train wreck that has ravaged Spike Lee for the past five year or so (before you stop me, I didn't see 25th Hour, which I heard from credible sources was pretty decent; leave me alone).

And for the first half hour of "She Hate Me," that's exactly what I got. The overwhelming hubris; the transparent messaging; the muddled, almost blunted inside joke that leaves you on the outside. The underdeveloped crack baby conceived in a one night stand between (1) half-baked racial politics and (2) a convoluted cultural agenda that manages to reinforce the same norms that it calls into question.

But somehow, Lee saves this one, making it provocative rather than tired. In this mess of a film, campy vignettes sprout up as tangential arguments surrounding a main thesis. Structuring the movie as such derails the thesis, transforming it from a coordinate plane to a topographic map with very queer landmarks. And while at first glance it might seem that Lee is playing the same role he does courtside at a Knicks game -- shouting his arse off at action of which he has marginal influence at best -- Lee's multiple divergent jeremiads are far less prescriptive than they are descriptive. The description, furthermore, is characterized by omission. We learn a lot more by what Lee chooses not to include than from what he includes.

Case in point: In a film that is so mired in present-day political discourse and broaches the subject homosexuality for a great deal of its duration, not once is the issues of gay marriage touched upon. The choice not to mention this subject, which has (unnecessarily?) asserted hegemony over a queer rights agenda, leaves way for Lee to touch on topics that receive far less mainstream attention, such as alternative understandings of the family, or how the (literal) commodification of the black male body resonates across a number of frameworks. Anthony Mackie is somewhat of an acquired taste in the lead role. His acting is tight enough to be convincing, but imperfect enough to purvey the affected sense that runs rampant throughout the film. His character, Jack Armstrong, works at a pharmaceutical development company whose aim is to develop an AIDS vaccine. Once this is established, a sequence of scenes reveal to us that the vaccine has been rejected by the FDA, that one of the main scientists has committed suicide, and that higher-ups in his company are guilty of blatant insider trading.

When Jack blows the whistle to the SEC, the shit deflects off of the fan and hits him in the face. He is fired and his bank account is frozen. In order to maintain the upper-class Manhattanite lifestyle he's been living, he grudgingly agrees to impregnate his ex girlfriend Fatima (Kerry Washington) and her new girlfriend Alex (Dania Ramirez). Receiving $10,000 for impregnating the two of them, Fatima convinces Jack to pony up his one trick to eighteen of her thirtysomething lesbian friends at 10G's a nut. Aronofsky-esque drug ingestion shots abound as Jack pops Viagra and Redbull to maintain stamina at these pregnancy parties, where five women each get a turn with Jack.

A few critics have taken issue with the film's portrait of lesbianism, claiming that it suggests that lesbianism is essentially heterosexuality-without-the-dudes. Reinforcing this viewpoint are "She Hate Me's" leading ladies, two bougie "lipstick" lesbians of color -- a light-skinned black woman and a Dominican mami -- with totally hellacious bodies, dude. But the lesbian representation isn't homogenous; rather, it runs the gamut and transcends racial borders. It's concurrently totally Hollywood and anti-Hollywood.

"She Hate Me" wraps itself up in so many questions that it's completely unable to resolve, and that's part of what makes it succeed. It diagnoses a politics that is weighted down by its anfractuous periphery and conflicted center. But in its articulation of these questions, it forces us to laugh at what makes us uncomfortable. It belies an almost tangible confusion in any attempt at reconciling its own identity, and unexpectedly brings us to a denouement that's ordo ab chao phrased through a deus ex machina. And like the XFL player from whom the film takes its name, what reads like a grammatical disaster conceals witty commentary on problematics that compromise identity.