Think Like a Man Too

It’s hard to ana­lyt­i­cal­ly recall Think Like a Man Too in the same way that it’s hard to remem­ber a ter­ri­ble, booze-soaked night out. One sus­pects there is no good to come from rifling through the dis­heart­en­ing mem­o­ries and the urge is very much to move on with life and think no more about it. How­ev­er, if Michael (Ter­rence Jenk­ins) can con­front Can­dace (Regi­na Hall) about her lap dance from a oily male strip­per, then we can con­front the entire con­tents of Think Like a Man Too, which con­tains the same char­ac­ters as Think Like a Man but whose title oth­er­wise makes no sense and con­tains no mean­ing, like every­thing else about it.

What cin­e­mat­ic pur­pose the noisy, super­fi­cial, bor­ing and total­ly out­dat­ed bat­tle-of-the-sex behe­moth serves is con­found­ing. IMDb defines it as a com­e­dy, a label that wouldn’t have dawned on this writer even though there are jokes – many rat­tled off by walk­ing-mil­lion-dol­lar-indus­try, Kevin Hart. His emphat­ic up-and-down deliv­ery nev­er reach­es cold, des­per­ate eyes. It’s like he knows that screech­ing ​“Dayum” at a women is tedious rather than delight­ful but does so any­way because… mon­ey! This is the third col­lab­o­ra­tion between Kevin Hart and direc­tor Tim Sto­ry. How long will their part­ner­ship con­tin­ue to line both their pockets?

None of the ensem­ble of char­ac­ters have any char­ac­ter­is­tics. They exist to say the most obvi­ous thing in any giv­en sit­u­a­tion and to progress the clunky Las Vegas Sto­ry with max­i­mum melo­dra­ma. Michael and Can­dace are hav­ing a Vegas wed­ding where they are both also hav­ing their stag and hen par­ties. As per The Hang­over films, Last Vegas and a litany of oth­er adult fun-times movies, Las Vegas func­tions as an x‑rated Oz where dreams play out in a con­se­quence-free bub­ble of lights, gam­bling, flesh, intox­i­cants and adrenaline.

The prob­lem is that none of the char­ac­ters or indeed Sto­ry have the imag­i­na­tion to make any­thing new with this idea. Watch­ing the film is like watch­ing the watered-down fan­ta­sy of a 14-year-old boy raised on a diet of misog­y­nis­tic R&B videos. Char­ac­ters drink fan­cy cock­tails, they whoop a lot, they hire slick cars, they hit a strip club, their eyes bulge at the sight of flesh, they fall foul of the law… in com­e­dy out­fits. Sto­ry con­fus­es enthu­si­as­tic deliv­ery of lines as char­ac­ters mak­ing light of their situations.

Noth­ing else real­ly hap­pens. Indi­vid­ual arcs are present but are han­dled in the the most ham-fist­ed of ways. If a char­ac­ter shouts (the per­ma-boom­ing sound­track means every­one has to shout ) some­thing in one scene, then you bet­ter believe some­thing will hap­pen imme­di­ate­ly as a result. Sto­ry mis­takes this tech­nique for pace but cou­pled with the uni­form­ly insub­stan­tial char­ac­ters, it just makes for a nar­ra­tive devoid of ten­sion or invest­ment. The glitz and gloss of the sur­round­ings and the charis­mat­ic females in the cast mean that the lev­el of bore­dom does vacillate.

But then a line like, ​“You need to get a lap dance from a hot sweaty stranger!” will be excitably deliv­ered and the banal­i­ty of it all is revealed anew. If Las Vegas clich­es are news and gen­der stereo­types your phi­los­o­phy then this is the film for you.