She Hate Me 2004

A baffling and muddled mishmash of epic proportions, Spike Lee doesn’t just bite off more than he can chew, he just unhinges his jaw to try and swallow everything whole and chokes on it. You expect, from the premise and poster, a terrible sex comedy. And you get that, in spurts. But it’s actually a mostly moody, lifeless, and dreary drama, where the attempts at jokes fall flat and make things all the sadder. There’s a corporate drama going on that’s probably the best part of the film; Lee is trying to say something, he’s fiery and impassioned. He’s trying to take on the pharmaceutical industry, and political corruption, and how the black man is punished and forgotten if he dares to step out of line. The successful black man accepted by the high class is only allowed that success if he continues to play his part, and he will be stripped of that success as it was never truly his. I get that. You’d think this would be the main thrust of this movie.

Unfortunately, Lee decides to not only challenge sexual politics in this already stuffed film, but lesbians. And intersected with that, black fatherhood. Even the movie often stops and points out that the corporate drama and everything else have nothing to do with each other. Mackie says as much in the courtroom. And the climatic speech the film hinges upon, that so clearly wants the power of Do The Right Thing, doesn’t bring it up at all. Instead it is ended by the intrusion of the other plot.

And that plot is not good. I did not need to know Spike Lee’s thoughts on lesbians and bisexual women and the black man’s role in this new world. I was not seeking it. It’s muddled. Artificial insemination is brought up and then just doesn’t work so that all these queer women, ostensibly most lesbians, can fall for that good dick, that dick that starts disgusted and progressively feels guilty. It’s the worst of both worlds. It’s a power fantasy of women considered off limits to men nonetheless finding a contrived reason to have sex with one and then to be shown on screen to be first uncomfortable and then orgasmically head over heels for the experience. And then Lee must moralize about how wrong it all is, not from their point of view but the black man’s, when in the framework of this film it all happened consensually, it was the women’s decision, but it just ain’t right. It’s a rejection of their interiority and self-ownership on two fronts in order to prop up the black man’s role as a father. Nowhere is that more exemplified than the ending, where he slots right in to the relationship of his ex and her girlfriend as the rightful father to their children, the traditional family structure restored with the slightest twist of one more woman who stopped being a fully fleshed character (if she ever was one to begin with) becoming an additional wife in all but name.

It’s a trainwreck of ambition, and for that I can’t give it a half star. There’s still enough Lee here to leave you captivated. Just in the worst way, trying to process and comprehend just what he was thinking. It’s no wonder we hate this.