She Hate Me

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.

I really have never commented on a forum pertaining to a movie in my entire life, but after watching this film, I was compelled to write something about what I watched. spike has done the worst film I have ever seen in my life. Coming from someone that I thought was a good writer, he just lost all direction,what a waste of time and art. I think that it needed so much work, and the premise is horrible, and unrealistic. Spike please try again, and don't assume or think for us the next time. Its just something that I would never see again! Also bad acting, and a waste of a handsome guy on film. I found the main character intriguing, smart,even comical, but he had nothing to work with. I left my television and VCR with sadness on the state of the world, and the mindset of Spike Lee.

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.

I'm sure somewhere in "She Hate Me" lies a good story that would make for an entertaining movie. What we have, however, is a convoluted mess that tries too hard to be a social satire.

The premise: Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), a hotshot VP at a pharmaceutical company, suddenly finds himself unemployed and in need of money. When his ex-fiancée-turned-lesbian Fatima Goodrich (Kerry Washington) offers him $10,000 to impregnate her and her lover Alex (the sexy Dania Ramirez), Jack realizes he could be a sexual cash cow. Next thing he knows, he's in high demand from wealthy lesbians who want children.

The problem is that Lee doesn't know what he wants his film to be. Or, what the story should be. He tackles way too many issues and never tackles any of them very well.

The film opens with a novel title sequence that ends with a broadside against President George W. Bush. Fair enough. Lee's bit actually works. The story then turns into some sort of diatribe against corporate greed, against the blatant excesses of the Enrons and WorldComs of corporate America. OK. Then there's also all this stuff about lesbians and impregnating them. And Jack's conscience about whether he's doing the right thing.

But the film then suddenly turns into a defense of Frank Wills, the black security guard who uncovered the Watergate burglary. Lee makes a valid point that while all the players involved in the burglary and subsequent cover-up went on to have lucrative careers as statesmen, authors, speakers and radio personalities, Wills died in obscurity. A tribute to Wills is long overdue. The man was a hero. But what the heck's his story doing in this film? And in a moment that seems completely arbitrary, Lee also throws in Oliver North into the mix of Watergate figures.

For a satire to work, it needs to satirize something. Frankly, I didn't know what exactly Lee was trying to send up. And, after a while, I didn't care. His movie's neither a sex comedy nor stinging social commentary. In fact, at times "She Hates Me" plays more like some sort of unbridled male fantasy. Not only are all the lesbians attractive, but also they want to get impregnated the old-fashioned way. The one lesbian who chooses artificial insemination fails and so has to plead with Jack to have sex with her.

Subtlety has never been Lee's forte. But in films such as "Do the Right Thing" (1989) and "Jungle Fever" (1991), he somehow found a good balance between satire and social comment. Here, he does no such thing. In "She Hate Me," Lee's about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

What's ultimately disappointing about "She Hate Me" is the often-inane writing. When Fatima tells Jack she always was a lesbian, even when she was dating him, and was merely in denial, she adds, "And I don't mean a river in Egypt." That's how lame the dialogue is. It gets even worse, when Lee and co-writer Michael Genet give Brian Dennehy positively laughable dialogue later.

The corrupt business practices of Enron and its ties to the Bush administration deserve to be told. As does a satire, if you must, of white collar crooks who get off relatively easy and wind up having hugely successful lives as a result of their crimes. But this isn't the film that does it.

Lee's clever, talented and certainly socially conscious, but just seems to be tossing in every idea he had into "She Hate Me." Instead of being bitingly satirical about society's lopsided values, this is a mishmash of a film that is never as funny as it wants to be or as provocative as it should be.

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!