Musings: Something New

Have you ever wondered why the men you're attracted to are the men you're attracted to? Something New, a gem of a film that didn't receive nearly the attention it should have, explores this phenomenon, tossing in the prickly black-white relations in this country for good measure.

But far from being preachy, Something New gets you to enjoy our differences even as it explores those similarities that draw us together. A brief summary: Kenya McQueen (Sanaa Lathan), a successful accountant on the verge of a partnership in a mostly white firm, is on the lookout for her IBM: Ideal Black Man.

Enter Brian Kelly (Simon Baker of The Mentalist). A friend of Kenya's at the firm sets them up on a blind date, promising that Brian is tall, gorgeous, and talented. Kenya's nervous and excited, then shocked. Brian, you see, is white. He's also a landscaper--a guy who does a dirty job, nothing like the high professional standards she expects in her ideal man. She tells him straight up that she doesn't "date white," but she ends up hiring him to transform her dead, overgrown garden into something wonderful.

When they connect--and you know they will; their chemistry is amazing--their relationship is tested by the mines so callously planted over years of black-white relationships in this country. Can Kenya introduce a white man into her proud, close-knit professional black family? Can Brian understand the pitfalls a successful black woman faces in a predominantly white workplace? And what happens when Kenya meets Mark, the IBM she claims she's been looking for all along?

This movie made me laugh, cry, and think. And swoon. As Brian tells Kenya when she asks why he traded a corporate career in advertising for a dirty job like landscaping, "I like to take hard earth and make it bloom." Oh, that we all could find a man like that. And oh, that we wouldn't be more concerned with what skin he has than the heart he finds underneath ours.