Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Blindly, my wife purchases this movie ‘The List’ from the Big Lots extra large bargain bin of discount DVD’s. She’s done this before, blindly purchasing DVD’s for three bucks, with the sole criteria for purchasing said DVD’s is because there are Black people on the cover. More times than not this DVD purchasing technique ends badly for the girl as most of these flicks are simply gawdawful, and by default this usually ends badly for me as well since she forces me to sit down and watch these discount DVD’s with her. As it turns out this particular trip to Big Lots wasn’t so bad, not because ‘The List’ was a good movie… it was not… but because the bargain bin had a copy of ‘Action Jackson’ in it which I forced the family to watch after we finished trudging through ‘The List’.

Lewis (Wayne Brady) is an advertising executive. What a surprise, a movie character who works in advertising. Lewis loves him some Cynthia, played by the lovely Tatyana Ali who, by the way, has just turned thirty. Thirty. Damn I am old. Lewis loves Cynthia so much that he has petitioned nationally televised love guru Dr. Davina (Janet Lynch) to allow him to propose to Cynthia on her love show. Sadly, like a weak layup in a lane patrolled by Mutombo, Lewis is REJECTED! Get that weak mess out of here.

Now Lewis is sad. To make sure he is never hurt again Lewis draws up a list of critical items that any woman he attempts to woo must possess. I realize that this is just a movie and all but considering these are ideal requirements for a woman there were a couple of things left off this ‘list’ that I believe would’ve been inserted onto any self-respecting man’s list who is not in a lame romantic comedy. That’s all I’m gonna say about that and will avoid getting into details. Anyway wouldn’t you know it that a woman appears virtually out of the blue who has all of the requirements that Lewis has on this list of his? Including a love of Ice Hockey? Thing is this woman Cecilia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), despite being cute as all get out, has some things going on in her life which will make it a challenge for our Ad Man and this aspiring actress he has fallen for to make that everlasting love connection.

Truth be told ‘The List’ isn’t nearly as bad as I’m making it out to be, I’m just not all that fond of Romantic Comedies. As a work of cinematic art it has its issues but as a romantic comedy it is what you would expect it to be. This would be one of the problems I had with the movie in that it doesn’t deviate one tiny bit from the romcom formula and adds absolutely nothing to the tired genre, but if you like romcom’s then this one may fill a late night movie viewing void. Wayne Brady, in what I believe is his first leading man role, does reasonably well as the hero searching for true love, and as one would expect from a Wayne Brady movie he even sings a cover tune. Sydney Tamiia Poitier is also a fetching actress in her role but I’m not sure that she Mr. Brady… hell, I don’t know… match. It’s not that they don’t have any chemistry together, even though they’re not exactly Hepburn and Tracy, they have enough of a connection to carry the movie through, it’s just that Ms. Poitier looks so much bigger than Wayne Brady. I never thought Wayne Brady to be small guy but standing next to Ms. Poitier who’s almost six feet tall he’s a small guy. It looked like director Brandon Sonnier had a dickens of a time trying to film his leads in such a way that Ms. Poitier didn’t always tower over Wayne Brady, and he was only successful some of the time. Not that I’m saying anything in particular but if the woman were standing next to me things would appear much more congruent since I don’t need lifts in my shoes and have the ability to make even the largest people looks small. It’s called presence folks. Or obesity. I get the two confused.

Everything else one would expect from a romantic comedy is in place with Flex Alexander on board as the funny sad sack friend, Erica Gimpel making an appearance as Cecilia’s confidant and of course the boy has girl, boy loses girl boy gets girl back… you know the routine. Oh and Malcolm Jamal Warner makes a very odd and disposable appearance as a stuttering football player for what I assume are comic relief purposes.

Some of the pacing was off indicating that the movie could’ve used a tighter edit, the com aspects of the romcom were lacking quite a bit for the most part but I have seen worse than ‘The List’.

After reading up on this movie preparing to do this alleged review there’s a long forum thread on how the producers of this movie have yet to render payment to the crew of this film, a read which I gotta admit was a bit more entertaining to me than the actual movie. Considering this movie has been picked up by Warner and shown on ABC Family a couple of times, and assuming what these crew members have said is true… for shame! Pay these people!