“Southside With You” is a movie only for romantics and/or a date night movie and I being in the former category loved it for many reasons starting with it has been awhile since Hollywood has made an understated love story that is sweet, touching, at times funny and is about two people we think we know.

How true the events we see taking place are, how real the dialogue is or the imagination of the screenwriter really doesn’t matter as both feel real.

We meet Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama as they get ready for him to pick her up and take her to a meeting that she is interested in. Almost from the beginning of the film to the end she insists it is not a ‘date’ though it seems to be just that as he had picked her up way too early to go to the meeting and instead suggests they go see an art exhibit. Michelle feels it would be wrong to go on a date with a summer intern at the firm where she is his adviser.

We spend the day and evening with them as they walk, talk, have a sandwich in the park, go to that art exhibit, eventually go to the meeting which makes her look at him in a different light and go for a couple of drinks and then to see Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing”. Along the way they find out both little things—she doesn’t like pie but does like chocolate ice cream—and big things—his 2 year affair with a white woman—and watch them fall in love as they question each other, and themselves, as to who they are. They have serious moments as she explains the double whammy of being a lawyer who is Black and a woman in a predominately white male run organization and he judges her wrongly only to find out how strong she is really.

That we know who they are and how the day will end adds an underlying ‘feel good’ layer to the story. The director and screen writer Richard Tanne keeps the movie and talk on the right level of two very smart, educated, goal oriented people falling in love and letting the audience come along for the ride.

I was not familiar with Parker Sawyers who plays Barack but I walked out of the theatre being impressed with him. Tika Sumpter, playing Michelle, is another story!! I have watched, and hated, her in Tyler Perry’s “The Have and Have Nots” as a conniving, blackmailing, assertive bitch and it took me a few minutes to forget that character and accept her in the role that she plays to perfection in “Southside With You”.

Also I love learning things from going to the movies and aside from a few bits about the two leading characters I was overwhelmed by the art work of Eddie Barnes not being familiar with his name and/or work. Be sure to stay for all the end credits to see some of his work, in addition to those paintings they show at the art exhibit. I definitely plan to do research on the artist.

The opening song of the movie sort of threw me as being too jarring for a love story but that soon faded out and the later music was perfect.

For the wrong reason many people won’t be going to see this movie which will only be their missing a smart romantic story of two people falling in love, no matter what their names are!

MOVIE TRAILER




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yn02RS6IT0