Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Dereck (Malik Yoba) loves him some Becca (Victoria Gabrielle Platt). Not really. Maybe. Who knows? Dereck doesn’t know what Dereck wants so naturally we don’t know what Dereck wants and thus we have one of the many challenges blocking our path to entertainment with this movie ‘My Girlfriend’s Back’.

Dereck’s life right now seems to be going real swell. He’s a big time lawyer working for a big time firm who has just closed a big time deal with some Japanese steel company, which should earn Dereck a partnership in this big time firm. His girl Becca is a society high flyer, classy, good looking, has a nice behind… not that this has anything to do with anything… and is a woman of means. Sure she’s a little bossy and controlling as Dereck would inform us, but he said that like this makes her different from any other woman. One thing that is a little odd about Dereck is that this big time lawyer with a big time job has a roommate. His roommate is his best friend Icky (Royale Watkins), that’s what they called him in this movie, and Icky is an ex major league baseball player. Why a couple of men, in their thirties, with plenty of money between them are living together is a great mystery. Icky also has the rather annoying habit of speaking in sports metaphors. Since he’s an ex-athlete and all. I’ve actually adopted this annoying practice because it’s a great conversation ender. If you find yourself trapped in a boring conversation with somebody, just go with ‘Man, sometimes you’ve got to step behind the line and shoot the three’. There’s no response to that. Conversation over.

Dereck’s comfortable life gets complicated when she walks back in the club, she being his ex-girlfriend Nicki (Tangi Miller). They left some things on the table unresolved, these two. The second thing that complicates Dereck’s life is that Becca backdoors my boy into an engagement. He was going to marry her anyway, but Becca was feeling the need to force his hand. Now Dereck’s all confused and stuff. His ex-girlfriend does this weird booty shake which has Dereck thinking he’s still in love with her, considering they’re having sex and stuff. He doesn’t think he wants to be a partner in this law firm anymore since his boss seems to be all racist and stuff, Becca’s parents (Obba Babatunde, CCH Pounder) are all stuck up and stuff and then there’s Becca who seems to want her future husband to have good job and stuff. Bitch.

Leaving the thematic issues of ‘My Girlfriend’s Back’ aside for the moment, let’s focus on some technical issues we had with this film. It felt as if large sections of this movie didn’t get shot or we were just stuck with watching a really bad edit. At times the movie would jump incoherently from one scene to the next with no setup between the cuts, which in turn led to a movie that had absolutely no pace or rhythm to it.

Too bad the movie itself couldn’t help the erratic nature of the flow of this film. So we have this guy, a wealthy lawyer with a roommate, with a girlfriend who I believe was supposed to be our antagonist but they presented the character of Becca to us as someone who was brutally honest, focused, driven and loyal to her man. Those really aren’t negative qualities. Then there’s Nicki who I imagine is supposed to be our ‘good girl’? I guess? Sure actress Tangi Miller is plenty good looking and she does have that weird booty dance down pat, but as far as her character goes she is sexing another woman’s man which in most cases isn’t behavior becoming of your average good girl. It didn’t help that Dereck and Nicki didn’t have that much chemistry between them, or Dereck and Becca for that matter but I guess that’s neither here nor there.

I guess the real issue, outside of the technical gaffes and the thematic problems is that this is a movie billed as a romantic comedy, but it wasn’t very funny. At all. There were a couple of semi-connected scenes that took place in a barber shop, and you know brothers in a barber shop tend to be pretty funny, just not these brothers.

My wife who saw this movie with me and disliked it even more than I did just walked by and asked me ‘What are you doing?’ After I informed her I’m typing my little review of ‘My Girlfriends Back’ she replied with ‘Why don’t you just say ‘It Sucked’ and call it day’. I had to let her know I’m not allowed to do that, but considering the talent in front of the camera in this one and a story that had a basic concept of one that should work… looking at what we ended up with… The little woman summed it up pretty nicely.