While Natalie is being punished for being too pretty, too smart and too self-sufficient to attract a guy, her friend Troy (Tracy Morgan), a stand-up comic, is wondering if being told you're the next Eddie Murphy for the last five years is a sign that something's not clicking career-wise.

Everyone's overweight best pal, Stephanie (Paula Jai Parker) craves to be sexy enough for some guy on the street to hit on her. Joy (Erika Alexander) and Leland (T.E. Russell) have lived together for about as long as Troy has been hearing about Eddie Murphy. She wants a ring. He wants her not to want a ring. Finally, there's Malik (Allen Payne), who's just gotten a big promotion at work but is freaked by his company's 10-year plan for his health, wealth and happiness.

It sounds a lot like a certain long-running TV show about six yuppies in New York facing, well, is it 40 by now? As it happens, first-time filmmaker Vanessa Middleton has a background in television, having written for "Cosby" and "Saturday Night Live." She can toss off some good lines, and she knows who each of these characters is. So do we. The picture's strong point is that sense of appropriate scale. Middleton is used to writing about people who aren't superheroes or Julia Roberts.

Yet that same TV training betrays her. Scenes build to what would be the next commercial break. Too many exchanges are sitcom-smooth. She's at her best when she examines the relationship between Natalie and a friend of Troy's, a doctor he describes as too traditional for her. Sure enough, when the man comes for dinner, Natalie points out that there's a bottle of wine on the counter, if he'd like some. "That would be great," he replies, sitting down and waiting for the glass to be placed in his pampered hand.

Their scenes are also a good indicator of the uneven acting. She's playing it for real; he's doing broad "chitlin' circuit" takes. There's the same disparity in the scenes between Alexander and a mugging Russell. This movie would work a lot better if people in the same scene were in the same movie.

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