Friends of ‘The Best Man’ Steal the Show

Taye Diggs acts in movies as if he has a sign dangling from his neck that reads “Future Major Star.” With his sculpted torso and a face that looks stunning in profile, he shortly may well become one.

But the effort of projecting all of that star charisma surely takes a toll. Maybe it siphons off energy he’d ordinarily use for acting, because Diggs, who made his debut as Angela Bassett’s boy toy in “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” doesn’t really create fully fleshed-out characters. He is a Presence for Hire. This causes problems for his new movie, “The Best Man,” because we never know what we are to make of his Harper Stewart.

Malcolm D. Lee, the film’s first-time writer and director, seems to want us to like the character, this even though he is, at heart, not very nice. Harper (Diggs) is to be the best man at the wedding of a former college classmate Lance (Morris Chestnut) and his sweet, almost innocent fiancee (Monica Calhoun). As a varied cast of friends gather in New York for the wedding, it turns out that an advance copy of Harper’s first novel is making the rounds. The book is a poorly veiled autobiography, and in it he reveals that sometime after he introduced the couple, Harper slept with Lance’s future bride.

The movie centers on Harper’s efforts to keep his friend--a hulking, hot-headed professional football player--from finding out. At the same time, the commitment-shy Harper has broken the heart of his lover (a very appealing Sanaa Lathan) and left her at home in Chicago. He’s entertaining notions of picking up where he left off with former almost-girlfriend Jordan (Nia Long), who still wants him badly.

“The Best Man” is Lee’s attempt at making a romantic comedy that black audiences can enjoy without having to reimagine themselves as Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Turnabout is fair play, so Lee talks in interviews about the story’s universality, which is his way of inviting white folk to the party.

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For large stretches of this nicely mounted production it looks as if the filmmaker (Spike Lee’s cousin) has what it takes to pull off his crossover dream. Somehow, though, those stretches all got bunched up near the end. The first half of the movie, however, lies there like an overturned bus--you wonder how it’ll ever get uprighted, but you don’t really want to stick around to find out.

Lee spends what feels like an inordinate amount of time moving his chess pieces into place. All the while, the characters can’t stop talking--a lot of back story has to get filled in. Trouble is everyone’s having the same conversation. The characters and locations may change--men try on tuxedos or play cards or Harper and Jordan buy a wedding gift together--but all of this is overlaid with a running dialogue about the book, the past and man-woman relations. It might as well be radio--what they’re doing hardly matters. Lee, nevertheless, is a talented filmmaker, and one whose sensibility and approach are totally different from that of his older, politically minded and aesthetically daring cousin (who’s one of the producers of “The Best Man”).

Once the story gets underway, the movie is quite funny, and except for Diggs’ blurry characterization, the actors all shine in sharply defined roles. Lee has a gift for snappy, character-revealing dialogue. He makes a misstep, though, in allowing his males to overindulge in profanity and frequent uses of a certain racial epithet. His defense doubtless would be that he’s “keeping it real.” But such language is jarring in a romantic comedy, especially when spoken by educated, supposedly sophisticated professionals in a movie that aims for “universal” appeal.

“The Best Man” has a decidedly male focus--Lee seems to think that having Diggs and Chestnut take off their shirts a lot will get women into seats. Some of the language and sexist attitudes keep you from feeling too warmly about the two main male characters, though. For all of Harper’s sins, Lance is worse. He is an unrepentant chauvinist who wears his religion on his sleeve. When he gets upset, which is often, he hits first and prays later.

Long, Harold Perrineau and Terrence Howard shine in supporting roles. Perrineau (“The Edge,” HBO’s “Oz”) plays a meek buddy who comes into his own over the course of the film. The standout character, though, is Howard’s Quentin, a ne’er-do-well friend who initially comes off as the least likable of the bunch. The character is a triumph of both writing and acting. Howard’s sly, devilish charm helps transform him into the movie’s unlikely voice of wisdom and moral conscience.

Howard plays him in a low-key fashion. He never shouts “Look at me,” but you do anyway because he’s the most interesting person on the screen. Diggs may well succeed in becoming the next Denzel Washington, but for now, in this movie, Howard’s off-kilter radiance blows him off the screen.

* MPAA rating: R, for language and sexuality. Times guidelines: Profanity and liberal use of racial epithets may be off-putting. The protagonist is brutally beaten at one point and almost thrown off a building.

‘The Best Man’

Taye Diggs: Harper

Nia Long: Jordan

Morris Chestnut: Lance

Harold Perrineau: Murch

Terrence Howard: Quentin

A Universal Pictures presentation of a 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks production. Director and screenplay Malcolm D. Lee. Producers Spike Lee, Sam Kitt, Bill Carraro. Cinematographer Frank Prinzi. Production designer Kalina Ivanov. Editor Cara Silverman. Composer Stanley Clarke. Costume designer Danielle Hollowell. Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes.

In general release.