Sprung

Love is a puerile, phony, but feasible dream in Sprung, the urban black date comedy by director and co-writer Rusty Cundieff (Tales from the 'Hood). When twentysomething Brandy (Tisha Campbell) with her "all men are dogs" attitude, goes on the prowl with her money-hungry friend Adina (Paula Jai Parker), they stumble across dressed-for-success Clyde and Montel (Joe Torry and Rusty Cundieff). Soon Adina and Clyde are waxing ("having sex," according to the glossary of "Sprung" speech included with the press kit) sentimental on a bearskin rug, leaving Brandy and Montel behind. But the course of love, if predictable, is never smooth, and shortly Adina is razzing Clyde's "weak and poor ass" while Brandy and Montel prove inseparably "sprung" love birds. The rest of the film's mildly comic effort focuses on the efforts of Clyde and Adina to subvert their friends' relationship and set things back to normal. Touching in its naïveté, Sprung nonetheless is doomed to formula and stereotype, even though its chief cliché is the reassuring one that love (and sex and money) is all we need. At Showcase Cinemas.

-- Margareta Mildsommar