* 1/2 out of * * * * ( poor , but has some good moments ) . directed by martin lawrence , written by martin lawrence , bentley kyle evans , kenny buford , kim bass , produced by martin lawrence . cast : martin lawrence ( darnell wright ) , lynn whitfield ( brandi web ) , regina king ( mia wilkins ) , bobby brown ( tee ) , della reese ( momma wright ) the main problem with martin lawrence's pet project , a thin line between love and hate , like any fatal attraction variation where the protagonist is a man , is that his character is an irresponsible jerk , and if that is the case , it doesn't seem to do anything except justify the woman's actions . that is especially the case in lawrence's darnell wright . he is one of those macho guys with women lined up a mile long . now don't think i condone this just because i'm male . my philosophy is , if you are one of the few heterosexual males lucky enough to get your hands on a beautiful , kind girl , you should treat her like a princess and respect her . darnell doesn't think like this . he sleeps with these girls once and dumps them . and by the period in the film he discovered that his newest target , beautiful , wealthy brandi web ( played nicely by whitfield ) who runs a successful real estate business , is out to kill him for dumping her for his childdhood friend mia ( king ) , i found myself thinking , " i'm supposed to feel sorry for this guy ? " after all , it is largely darnell's fault . if he is lining up all these women , you'd think he'd have enough common sense to think it would backfire on him one day , as his mother says it does . but he doesn't , so you get the sense that he's not only irresponsible , but also pretty dumb . you especially get this sense that he's dumb after brandi tells him she killed her husband for allegedly abusing her . ( i'd put my pants on in two seconds after that ! ) now , brandi is a psycho bitch , but it's hard not to agree with what she says to darnell during the finale about guys like him treating her like garbage . one final flaw , though , is letting brandi fall for darnell to begin with . brandi is a classy , intelligent woman with an mba from harvard , who initally resists darnell's " immature play " as she calls it , as any woman like her would in real life . but all of a sudden she says yes . but when you listen to darnell's four letter word vocabulary watch his actions , you wonder why such an intelligent woman would fall for a guy like darnell period , much less have such an unhealthy obsession for him ! lawrence can be good when he wants to , but in order to prove it , he needs to let other people write and direct his movies . look at this movie . four writers , as a result it's too long ( two hours , when it could've easily worked at ninety minutes ! ) and it has a lot of subplots and characters that appear and disappear as quickly as they came ( which makes me think the writers didn't get along ) , all of which isn't necessary . there are some bright spots , though . whitfield , regina king , della reese , and bobby brown all do what they can with lazily written parts , and they help it out a lot . and there are some funny parts ( like , for example , the scene where reese attempts to fight whitfeld for harrassing her son and damaging her property ) , but they're just not enough to sustain the film . 
