True to the Game series

(On TV, October 2021) Considering my low opinion of the first True to the Game, I really wasn’t expecting much from the follow-up. To my surprise, it’s actually better than the original—not by much, and not enough to rate as a good film, but at least it’s not filled with annoyances as the first was. While the first was an unwieldy adaptation of a self-published novel, this one seems to be a purely cinematic expansion, picking up a short time after the events of the first film. Our protagonist (Erica Peeples, not bad) has become a NYC journalist, grown a more flattering hairstyle, and polished many of the most irritating edges of her personality. When she gets an offer to profile a rich businessman in Los Angeles, she drives there (what?!?), is romanced by two men (one of them white, the other black—and surprisingly enough for a BET-broadcast production, it’s the white guy who’s the good one) and gets a largely useless revelation from her interviewee. Meanwhile, shenanigans back in Philadelphia put the rest of her family once again in danger in what is largely a separate subplot. Finally, there’s a dangerous man who sets out to take revenge (or at least money) from the protagonist by seducing her before his inevitable betrayal. Those are big broad strokes of plot and they’re not even gracefully integrated together. Characters make decisions that only work because they lead to the next plot point (and sometimes not even that, such as the inexplicable decision to drive from NYC to L.A. rather than take a plane), there are nick-of-time coincidences and the film ends before resolving its own plot, obviously announcing the eventual arrival of True to the Game 3. Still, I did not dislike the brute-force entertainment of the results (macho gangsterism, cheap thrills, naked girls and all) and certainly liked it better than the clumsy original.