Dorien Wilson

  • His, Hers & the Truth (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2019) The advantage of having something near ten thousand movie reviews on a backwater website is that I can now bury deep-down secrets in one of those reviews and be sure that no one will ever read it. And this is my confession, dear non-existent reader: If I regularly watch romantic comedies on BET, it’s strictly for the women. Where else can I be reasonably sure to see so many beauties smiling and having fun? Unlike Hallmark or Lifetime movies, BET doesn’t fear upsetting viewers by showcasing beautiful women. I surely got what I was looking for in His, Hers & The Truth, as female lead Ashley A. Williams is simply gorgeous here as a young urban professional telling the rocky story of her romance despite a very, very bad start. It’s not exactly an exceptional film even by romantic comedy standards: the borrowing from other sources is blatant (specifically the “males and females can’t be platonic friends,” theme from When Harry Met Sally). The framing device of having multiple versions of the same events is not used very effectively, the third act becomes a bit of a mess and you can sense the screenwriter throwing in arbitrary obstacles just to keep the story running longer. On the other hand, the film’s first half is quite a bit better than it had any right to be — the heavily dialogue-based opening amusingly features the male character behaving abominably during a terrible first date, and the lead couple is exceptionally likable. His, Hers & The Truth gets more muted at it goes on, as the story becomes more contrived, there are some awkward time-skips and the dialogue becomes both less polished and less important. Still, it’s a breezy romantic comedy at the best of times. Williams is superb, funny and likable, while co-star Brad James manages to keep the audience on his side despite a very poor introduction. It wraps up happily (perhaps more happily than you’d expect from the framing device), and there is strong comedic support from Cocoa Brown and Dorien Wilson as relationship counsellors not necessarily any wiser than the lead characters. It could have been better, but the film can be very compelling at times and that’s all I’m asking for. Well, that and the ladies.

  • Fruits of the Heart (2021)

    Fruits of the Heart (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2021) Criticism-by-comparison is rarely fair, but it’s almost mandatory to mention the similarities between Fruits of the Heart and the Oscar-winning Terms of Endearment. The basics are unerringly similar: Both films are about the relationship between a mother and her daughter through many years, with an old-fashioned weeper of a conclusion to make sure that viewers understand that this is meant as drama. Even if we accept that Fruits of the Heart’s writer/director Coke Daniels may not be aware of the earlier film, comparisons between the two are not to its advantage — and I say that as someone who didn’t particularly care for Terms of Endearment. For one thing, the tone of Fruits of the Heart is all over the place, going from comedy to drama to romance to hard-hitting tragedy. There are basic credibility problems (such as the mother’s vast mansion without the means of supporting it) that exacerbate some chaotic plotting that seems even more arbitrary in the context of squeezing years of melodrama in less than two hours. Things happen, but the time-skips make those developments seem more arbitrary than organic — if there’s a kind of story that called for a miniseries, this would be it. I’m not normally so harsh on BET Original movies (there’s a reason why I keep watching them, after all), and to be fair, there are some interesting things here. There’s some visual style that could have been developed further. Dorien Wilson plays what feels like a fun supporting character that becomes annoying the moment he tries to become a main character. Lil Mama and Wendy Raquel Robinson make for good anchors for the rest of the film. But ultimately, the constant swerves of Fruits of the Heart’s change of tone are a bit hard to follow, and the ultimate aim of making viewers burst into tears does feel unwarranted by the material that precedes it. It’s a mess, and a waste as well — there are many ways the story could have gone in more satisfying ways. Terms of Endearment, it isn’t.