Just Wright (2010)

(On TV, August 2022) It’s great good fun to see Paula Patton and Queen Latifah duke it out as roommates-turned-romantic rivals in Just Wright, and in (predictably) seeing Latifah come out on top. This isn’t much of a romantic comedy—although the emphasis on Latifah being a physical therapist to an injured basketball player does make the film distinctive. It’s all slickly directed by Sanaa Hamri even when the script takes a few convenient shortcuts and keeps the suspense going for no good reason. There’s interesting character development between the film’s two female leads here—they start out as friendly roommates early on when Patton plays a gold-digger to men in which Latifah has no interest, but they soon turn rivals when the flaws of one of them (quickly compounded by other problems) threaten the other. If you think that Patton’s character self-evaporates quickly from the film at the mid-point, just wait: the third act is predicated on her return. Common plays a likable basketball player, but it’s not his movie: it’s Latifah’s. (Pam Grier also pops up briefly as the protagonist’s mom.)  Analyzing the film more deeply would miss the point of this being a consciously formulaic romantic comedy—Just Wright hits its targets, delivers everything in clean style and leaves viewers smiling. All done.