Anthony Montgomery plays Jay, a black hipster geek who womanizes white women in a mildly offensive way. He's a serial monogamist who cowardly breaks up with each girlfriend with the same hastily written note. The film opens with a lighthearted series of angry exes reading his break up note, which piqued my interest because it was fairly articulate self-aware bullshit. He decides that his problem is that he needs to find a "sista", or "operation brown sugar" as his graphic novel friends dub the recent epiphany. The movie attempts to address racial stereotypes by eventually uncovering that what was masked by a superficial focus on color was actually a deeper pattern of fear and lack of integrity. As every romantic comedy requires, the perfect woman appears in the form of Lia Johnson. She plays Catherine, who is hot, a best selling feminist author, and also quirky enough to complement Jay.
They're both chain smokers, weird, and have believable chemistry. She mistrusts men, and he has to deal with the fact that his relationship woes have been because of him and not the women that he dated. I enjoyed this movie for a couple of reasons: for a formulaic romantic comedy, the main characters are refreshingly smart and deviations from the norm, and I laughed out loud several times. The one major criticism I have of the film is that it's frustrating that Catherine, who is a successful, beautiful writer, would be vulnerable enough to be attracted to someone who she has to take care of. But sadly, this is so typical in the world in general.
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