***/*****
Kenya (Sanaa Lathan) is an ambitious African American career woman too driven to have a romantic life, yet too tightly wound to remain grounded without one. Landscape architect Brian (Simon Baker) is a blind date who winds up hanging around to reclaim the jungle in the backyard of her new home.
You know how it works. She's a control freak workaholic with demanding standards and an aversion to nature that isn't tamed and trimmed. He's a free and easy green thumb with a spontaneous streak and a romantic sensibility.
And there's one other complication: he's white. In Kenya's cultural circle, dating a white man is something akin to racial betrayal.
Despite the title, "Something New" is nothing new, a familiar tale of lovers separated by cultural assumptions and social expectations. It just feels like it is fresh because it's so rare to see the situation approached from perspective of the black professional community, which director Sanaa Hamri and screenwriter Kriss Turner (both making their feature debuts) explore intelligently -- it's as much about the expectations Kenya has internalized as it is about social pressure -- if not always deftly.
The film comes down to the same question: Will these crazy kids survive the personal clashes and social disapproval? Brian is hardly the ideal pedigree for Kenya's social status -- he's not just white, he's a gardener! -- but if he's the one under scrutiny, she's the one who squirms.
The experiences of a professional African American woman in a predominantly white business culture gives "Something New" an interesting perspective. The warmth of Baker as the cuddly nature boy (another idealized image, certainly, but a romantic one) and the intelligence and fire of Lathan give the lesson, and movie, just enough heart to make it enjoyable.
