Disappearing Acts (Full Screen) [DVD]

Features

• Type: DVD
• Studio: HBO
• Language(s): english, english
• Subtitle(s): french, spanish, english
• Actor(s): Sanaa Lathan, John Amos, Wesley Snipes

Disappearing Acts (DVD)He's a semi-employed construction worker and she's a music teacher with ambitions for a singing career. But when they meet at her Brooklyn brownstone their socio-economic differences melt away--or do they? This is the question that drives this 112-minute HBO movie based on Terry McMillan's best-selling novel. Zora wears fabulous clothes, decorates her hardwood-floored apartment with unusual furniture, and dines with her girlfriends at chichi restaurants, while Franklin can't even make regular child-support payments to his estranged wife. She's college educated; he doesn't have his GED. Sanaa Lathan (Love and Basketball) gives Zora dignity and grace throughout the film, while Wesley Snipe's Franklin starts out with those qualities but eventually degenerates into sullenness. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love and Basketball) starts out strong by making Brooklyn a third vibrant character and creating fun takes on the awkward events in every couple's early stages--meeting the friends, dining with the parents. But she loses her way a bit in the middle and seems to rush the end. With much of the transitional material of the book missing in the movie, female viewers may find the ending tough to swallow. The film is rated R for language, brief nudity (specifically of coproducer Snipes's rear quarters), and sexual content. The DVD offers a three-minute featurette (a trailer augmented with brief interviews with the stars and a reading of book excerpts by McMillan) and three "in character" performances by the two leads.--Kimberly Heinrichs