Antwone Fisher (2002)
*½/****
starring Derek Luke, Joy Bryant, Denzel Washington, Salli Richardson
screenplay by Antwone Fisher
directed by Denzel Washington
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Taking one look at the cover of my press kit for Antwone Fisher, a critic friend of mine sneered and said simply, “Ah. Oprah meets Dr. Phil.” But he was more right than he could have ever imagined, because it’s the whole culture of obsessive therapy that gruesome twosome represents that poisons and kills what could have been a real movie. Instead of training its eye directly on the events that traumatized its eponymous lead (and real-life screenwriter), Antwone Fisher substitutes people talking about them in a therapy setting–a terrible mistake that robs the film of any dynamism and does little to distinguish it from the mountain of inspirational stories that pile up on daytime television.