Family ties are the power behind 'Deliver Us'

Friday, February 7, 2003

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

"Deliver Us From Eva" presents itself as a sassy twist on "Taming of a Shrew," but what looks like just another contrived sex comedy becomes, surprisingly, an insightful and sensitive look at knots that family ties create in adult romance.

MOVIE REVIEW

DELIVER US FROM EVA

DIRECTOR: Gary Hardwick

CAST: LL Cool J, Gabrielle Union, Duane Martin

RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes

RATING: R for sex-related dialogue

WHERE: Bella Bottega 11, Cinema 17, East Valley 13, Galleria 11, Grand Cinemas, Lewis & Clark, Longston Place 14

GRADE: B

Gabrielle Union is Eva, who looks like a Janet Jackson Cabbage Patch Kid until she sets her jaw, narrows her eyes and lets loose -- through a smile you only think reveals bared teeth -- her clipped, cutting verbal attacks on the men who have won the hearts of her younger sisters. She's deadly, a passive-aggressive hellcat steering her sisters' lives with advice culled from pop-psychology magazines, and Union gives it all her ferocity and sass.

Tired of her interference in the lives of their wives and cowed by her icy wit and edged insults, the three men hire ladies man Ray (LL Cool J) to date and distract Eva. Their plot is as vindictive as it is defensive. They want Ray to woo her, move her out of town and then dump her.

Ray isn't that cold, he's merely restless, but he likes a challenge and he's met his match in Eva. The romance is sexy if a little bland, powered largely by Union's radiance and J's easy charisma and smiling confidence, but behind the machinations and weakening wills are a powerful undercurrent of emotional ties.

Eva has been mother to her siblings ever since their parents' deaths left them orphans. When they curry Eva's favor like girls competing for Mom's approval, or react to her first romance in years with more jealousy than joy, you can feel the echoes of past loss in their possessiveness. That undercurrent give the otherwise light comedy an unexpected resonance.

Director Gary Hardwick ("The Brothers") bends over backward to create a happy ending from the destructive mischief and lets more than a few characters off the hook, but he casts an understanding eye to the ways that the best intentions of a supportive family can get in the way of leaving the nest and committing yourself to a new life.