Hav Plenty

Posted by Matthew Milam (matthewmilam29@gmail.com) on April 15, 2007

1997 was something of a crossroads for me. The previous year I was looking to break the emotional and physical scars of my high school life. The goal: to attend film school and become one of the greatest filmmakers at of all time despite the lack of diversity in the field. Unfortunately, I found very few people willing to help me with my films. I also discovered that the burden was perhaps much more cumbersome than I realized.

The college I went to, while very much a film school, was too expensive for my parents. The dream died in 1998. I came back to finish and did so with a Bachelor Of The Arts degree. Now I am unemployed and writing film reviews for free. That for most people not only equates failure, but a misguided and unrealistic attempt at a dream career.

And then, Hav Plenty came to mind.

Released around the time of such black-themed movies such as Love Jones and Soul Food, Hav Plenty was the low-budget cousin of the bunch. The script was run-of-the-mill, the cast was unknown, and the only selling point for seeing it was that Babyface was attached to it (musically and financially). 9 years after the original release of the film, I can still watch it. I can’t say that about other films I’ve always thought as favorites.

The film centers around Lee Plenty (Christopher Scott Cherot) who is a teacher’s assistant at New York University and an aspiring writer. We first meet him on the couch of Havilland Savage (Chenoa Maxwell) watching a video of her engagement to Michael Simmons (Hill Harper) who is a popular R&B singer. Its okay, he doesn’t like her anyway. Or does he?

Things get complicated when Havilland invites Lee down to her mother’s place for New Year’s Eve. They dated once in college and ended up just staying on the “associates” tip due to their differences of sophistication. And yet, he, a broke failed writer, is invited to a shin-dig with her present.

No sooner than he arrives that he is then pursued by two other women of Havilland’s posse, her sweet sister Lee Darling (Robinne Lee) and Caroline Gooden (Tammy Katherine Jones) who is the ditz of the three. Each has their own reason for getting with Mr. Plenty — Ms. Darling because she’s fed up with fighting with her husband Felix (Reginald James) and Caroline because he’s available. All the while Havilland doesn’t care much that they throw themselves at Lee, what does is the fact he rejects them both.

I can certainly see why.

The first pass made at him comes from Caroline herself, who overkills on the vamp-ness and attempts to reel Mr. Plenty by straddling him for a kiss. Unfortunately, she makes the mistake of talking, and saying nothing, thus negating the exercise altogether. Lee Darling is a different matter altogether.

Lee Darling married Felix because everyone marries their high school sweetheart. But as we all know, getting married doesn’t increase the love, sometimes it breaks it. Seeing Mr. Plenty makes her see that she should be able to make her mind up in career (she was thinking about leaving to another state for a job with Hav) and in love. Ms. Darling attempts to also as well corner Lee, and in doing so gives Felix an excuse to sock the poor man in the guts for trying to kiss his wife, which he didn’t. Meanwhile, Michael Simmons himself is no better, he constantly cheats on her with other women while out doing his singing career.

The opportunity is there for Lee Plenty and Havilland Savage to get together, but will they actually take it? That part I won’t spoil, the alternate ending will do that for you.

During the production of the film, Director Cherot was forced to cast himself in the Lee Plenty role when the original actor saw the potential for a theatrical release. Also a hard pill to swallow (and is an irony spoken on in the films final scenes) is that an alternate ending had to be put it for a more positive response from the audience. When you see it, you’ll know exactly what I mean. It’s not a bad ending mind you, but it doesn’t flow well with the film and feels tagged on.

I found Lee Plenty’s struggle to be a writer and survive on his own to be more interesting than his supposed attempt at finding love. The way the script was going, the romance bits seemed more like distractions to his story. I would have loved to see more of him living in his car, where he goes to shower, how he makes meals for himself. That would be a nice contrast to the successful Havilland (although you don’t get a sense she does much when you finally see her at her job).

The cast themselves do a good job with what’s handed to them. The best out of them easily is Christopher Cherot and Robinne Lee. Their performances and characters feel more like real people that you could sit next to and have a decent conversation with. I didn’t feel that way with the rest of the cast. Then again, the point was that these seemingly perfect people were a bit standoffish. Hill Harper is also good as Michael Simmons, who probably knew a few guys who acted like him in real life. He easily has the best “desperate-to-get-laid” line when he points out a vain in his brain in relation to Havilland, you’d have to see it to believe it.

The rest of the cast you could take or leave. Chenoa Maxwell is one of the most attractive women on screen, but I have the feeling that if I were standing next to her she would act just like she did to Lee Plenty. I could imagine she was probably the hardest to deal with during the production of the movie. That being said, Maxwell co-produced Box Marley, another project of Cherot’s made a bit after this one. She also co-starred with The Wood’s Richard T. Jones in G, a urban remake on the Great Gatsby (also directed and co-written by Cherot). Reginald James looked irritated, although that was a performance choice probably. He also seems to get the least amount of screen time even thou he is somewhat essential to the plot as Lee Darling’s husband Felix.

It’s a shame that Christopher Scott Cherot’s work doesn’t get the distribution that lower sub-par films in black filmmaking get. According to IMDB, G was completed in 2002, it took 4 years to get a DVD release for the film. That’s a long time for a film to go without a video release.

If Cherot never does another film again, at least he can say he tried. Despite the many flaws of Hav Plenty, I still keep a copy of it on my shelf and still watch it because of the fact that if he can make it, I could. Perhaps I will try again someday.

Read more articles by Matthew Milam