Deliver Us From Evaturns 20 this month. Twenty years ago, in February 2003, the comedy starring Gabrielle Union and LL Cool J hit theaters, aiming to capture a romance-hungry Valentine’s Day audience and cement its place in the Black rom-com canon. It was Union’s first lead role in a romantic comedy (until then, she’d perfected playing meangirl sidekicks or scheming sidepieces) and LL’s most mainstream foray into the genre (long before he’d woo us and Queen Latifah in Last Holiday and after he was rap’s reigning ladies man). Respectively, they play Eva, an uptight meddling older sister and hard ass restaurant inspector, and Ray, the hotshot player that Eva’s brothers-in-law hire to date her in order to get her out of their lives. Directed and co-written by Gary Hardwick, the film is a twist on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrewand features a notable supporting cast — including Essence Atkins, Robinne Lee, and Meagan Good as Eva’s sisters — that, along with Union and LL Cool J, elevate a shaky script and predictable punchlines. It’s the power of Union and Cool J as a pair that pushes the movie from a standard early 2000s comedy full of jokes that don’t hold up and cardboard female characters to a watchable, fun romance that proved these stars were born to fall in love onscreen.
