“Obsessed”

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:29:00 +0000

In theory, "Obsessed" has everything going for it: Sharon and Derek, a happily married, affluent and very beautiful young black couple (played by Beyoncé Knowles and Idris Elba) find their union shaken by Lisa (Ali Larter), a shameless -- and totally bonkers -- white hussy who temps at hubby's office. Lisa pounces on Derek in the men's room during the office Christmas party, shows up unannounced at the hotel where he's attending a business retreat and, while Sharon and Derek are out on a date, even wheedles her way past the babysitter to cuddle their young son. It's only a matter of time before Sharon, at first oblivious to these psycho highjinks, catches on to Lisa's plot and, figuratively speaking, claws her eyes out.

But "Obsessed," directed by the unfortunately named Steve Shill (making his feature debut) and written by David Loughery ("Lakeview Terrace," "Passenger 57"), takes far too long to get cooking, and it works so hard at not being exploitation that it loses sight of its reasons for existing in the first place. Face it: The idea of white women "stealing" good black men is a contentious one, at least in the black community. But you don't have to be a black woman to want to see Beyoncé kick that loony white bitch's much scrawnier ass.

Beyond good and evil in Baltimore

Sat, 12 Jul 2003 20:00:00 +0000

The TV world is made up of three kinds of people: 1) saintly public servants who strive to keep dangerous criminals off the streets, save innocents from death row and perform heart-lung transplants on disabled children in burning buildings; 2) devil-may-care villains who want to harm, maim and deceive as many women, children and small animals as possible, all the while getting high on crack and smashing stuff up with baseball bats; and 3) wisecracking jackasses with pretty, wisecracking wives and adorable, wisecracking children and three-bedroom houses with roughly the same living-room layout.

The motives of each TV type are spelled out over and over again, in countless dramas and sitcoms up and down the dial. The saints want to make the world a better place (which is apparently a tough row to hoe, given how many of the saints also battle with alcoholism), the villains crave the kind of power afforded to those willing to ignore all rules, and the jackasses want to avoid getting canceled so that they never have to go back to doing stand-up in the Scrooge McDuck Lounge of a Disney-themed cruise ship.

Salon.com > Idris Elba

“Obsessed”

Beyond good and evil in Baltimore