Hav Plenty

Just what the theaters needed, another boorish hip-hop romance. This one claims to be based on the writer/director/actor's own love life. Christopher Scott Cherot stars as Lee Plenty, a homeless and dateless writer struggling to get a career foothold in New York City. He finds shelter by housesitting the apartment of Havilland "Hav" Savage (Chenoa Maxwell, eschewing the doe-eyed charms of Sandra Bullock while crassly dropping the words "fuck" and "bitch" in every other sentence), his unrequited love from college.

Needless to say, Hav is having romantic issues herself: her boyfriend, a famous rapper (he makes love songs titled "Crack Addict" about being addicted to his gal's crack), has been outed by the tabloids for having an affair with Jada Pinkett. Out of purported pity Hav invites Lee down to DC for New Year's Eve, where her girlfriend and sister make passes at the smugly cynical scribe. You know from the title that Hav and Lee will end up together, but what happens in the middle isn't hip or hop enough to redeem this self-enamored flop. At the Nickelodeon, the Janus, and the Circle and in the suburbs.

-- Tom Meek