There was a time in the 1970s when the term “blaxploitation” referred to films like Shaft and Foxy Brown, wherein empowered, ultra-cool, and often violent African-American characters would stand up to black social stereotypes and prove that black people could be even more capable, even more moral, and even more sexual than their more “mainstream” white counterparts. Thanks to certain films like Scary Movie, The Best Man, The Wood, the entire canon of Tyler Perry, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Precious, and any number of mid-budget Hollywood films to feature all-black casts and to address the concerns of the so-called post-racial America (i.e. released after 2000), we are currently living through an age of what could perhaps be called neo-blaxploitation, to coin a term.
These are not just movies about black people and the black community, but are most certainly marked by an overwhelming brightness and eager, corny sincerity that hasn’t been seen in Hollywood feature films since, gosh, the 1940s. All of these movies in the neo-blaxploitation canon seem to hammer openly and heavily on old dramatic clichés, wringing tears from well-worn sitcom situation and soap opera dynamics. Abusive husbands, teary farewells, cancer, old-fashioned gender roles, the saccharine elements of a bygone Hollywood era are alive and well in films aimed at what Hollywood not-so-subtly refers to as “the urban market.”
So when one sits down to watch a light-as-meringue sitcom movie like Baggage Claim, one may be in a position to forgive a lot of its corny emotional hucksterism because, well, it’s just so sweetly puppy dog earnest. This is a film that doesn’t have a single profound thought in its pretty little head, and will work its darndest to win you over with scene after scene of plush hotel rooms containing impossibly attractive and impossibly wealthy black men, flashing dazzling smiles at the woo-worthy Paula Patton, who, like a living glass of grenadine and lemon-lime, smiles back, and gosh are we ever charmed by the charming charm of it all. It’s so charming, you may get a cavity.
Baggage Claim, written and directed by novelist/filmmaker David E. Talbert, is charmingly backward in many respects. In its views toward women and marriage, one may be tempted to assume it was adapted from a Jane Austen novel. Patton plays a single flight attendant named Montana Moore (not to be confused with Montana Moorehead from Soap Dish), a woman in her early 30s who has seen her mother married five times, and her younger sister gearing up to marry for the first. This casts a mild existential pall on her own romantic life, and she becomes determined to find not just a nice boyfriend, but a viable marriage candidate to show off to her family within the next 30 days.
Her randy flight industry friends (including the buxom-and-then-some Jill Scott and the clichéd Gay Best Friend Adam Brody) conspire to put her on flights with her traveling ex-boyfriends (because everyone is traveling around for Thanksgiving) so that she may re-evaluate them as potential lifemates. Few of them are; more than one of them lies about his marital status.
Each of the ex-boyfriends is amazingly wealthy and ambitious in some way (Taye Diggs is an aspiring politician, Trey Songz is a rich record producer), making for good mates on paper, but each of them, of course, has a single flaw that disqualifies them, forcing Montana to tick them off her list with shockingly insensitive casualness. Indeed, four or five of the exes speed by in a montage of answering cell phones at dinner. What would have been nice is a story or an examination of each of these exes to see what their history was with Montana, why they broke up, who did the breaking, etc. etc. Montana must have been staggeringly copacetic in each of her breakups, because her exes are all instantly willing to give her a second go. It’s not even hinted that there may be bitterness.
Will Montana shack up with the rich Djimon Honsou, who promises a life of ease and exotic travel, or will she pick her humble and down-to-Earth childhood friend Derek Luke? Who could possibly guess?
The film is so sticky sweet and so full of brightness and joy, it’s hard to take any of it seriously, especially due to the dumb premise, sloppy writing, and non-resemblance to anything remotely approaching real human behavior. It’s like drowning in lemonade. This is a movie wherein a charming and frilly woman like Montana can find out that her boyfriend secretly has a pregnant wife, and then immediately patch up the emotional scars in the next scene with a sun-dappled let-me-make-you-breakfast montage, complete with mimosas and throwing lettuce at one another.
The only person who walks away from this is the living bouquet Paula Patton. I last saw her shamefully flashing the camera in the ultra-male 2 Guns. Here, Patton floats along on a wing and a song, slurring her speech in that ever-so-cute fashion, trying on her get-’em-boys brassieres, exuding her own light and charm, perfectly willing to be the shining center of what is essentially a dull and kinda offensive and rather stultifying rom-com. Patton sparkles. This is a movie wherein she literally climbs into a trash can, and later falls out still looking fabulous and smelling like a rose.
Because of all the gee-whiz glitter in your eyes, it’s hard – for extended periods – not to be charmed by this largely stupid and personality-free little confection.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
