Something New Synopsis: Kenya McQueen, an accountant finds love in the most unexpected place when she agrees to go on a blind date with Brian Kelly, a sexy and free-spirited landscaper.
Career-driven Kenya McQueen is on an ambitious path to partnership at her firm, but she longs for companionship. Unfortunately, her standards are a little too high, and when she agrees to “let go, let flow”, her friend sets her up on a blind date with Brian Kelly… a white landscaper.
Given that she prefers black men, Kenya backs away from any romantic future but hires Brian as her landscaper to work on her backyard mess. Sparks fly as they get to know one another and eventually fall in love. But outside pressures from her family and friends, not to mention her own misgivings about Brian’s race, threaten to derail the relationship.
Sanaa Lathan is one of my favorite actresses and one whom I believe is very underrated. She’s so good at coming across as a total ice queen, but one with so many layers. Some of the characters I’ve seen her play could very well come across as one-dimensional, but Lathan is able to give them so much complexity. Kenya is one of those characters. She’s so hell-bent on being the perfect employee and daughter that she’s unable to really let her true nature shine through.
There are certain standards to which she feels she needs to live. So when Brian (Simon Baker) begins to threaten those standards, you can see the war inside of her to make everyone else happy and play by society’s rules… versus just making herself happy and following her heart. She plays a similar character in Nappily Ever After, though that movie is less about finding love and more about finding oneself.
I haven’t seen Simon Baker in much, but he’s well-cast as a laid-back landscaper who challenges Kenya’s preconceived notions about love and how it should fit into her life. Baker and Lathan have fantastic chemistry together. Donald Faison is humorous as Kenya’s playboy brother and Alfre Woodard is always fantastic, playing Kenya’s slightly uptight mother. Blair Underwood shows up as a potential rival for Kenya’s affections, and I really loved Kenya’s circle of friends, played by Golden Brooks, Taraji P. Henson, and Wendy Raquel Robinson. The entire cast played well off of one another and provided plenty of tension and conflict for Kenya and Brian.
Something New touches upon race and Kenya’s initial discomfort at dating a white man. Her friends do their best to make Brian uncomfortable, and Brian doesn’t always use the right amount of tact when asking Kenya questions, nor does he fully understand where she’s coming from as a single, black woman. He’ll never be able to understand it, and those differences threaten the relationship more so than any other outside force. Perhaps they could have dealt with the race issue a bit more, but I guess since it’s a romantic comedy with a 99-minute runtime, many of those more serious subjects will be more or less swept under the rug.
At the end of the day, Something New was a lovely surprise. I wanted to watch it for some time and am glad I finally did. There are a lot of similarities to Nappily Ever After, but Something New does stand on its own. I would recommend it.
Watched: 06/11/2021
Notable Song: I Pretend I’m Loving You by Jimmy Radcliffe
