Saturday Night Life (2006)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
A depressed, struggling single mother takes her three children out for the night. That's pretty much the only "plot" you need to know about this film because if you were to know anything else several small bits would be ruined. I can't say I had ever heard of this film before I came across it on one of those Showtime stations but it turned out to be quite entertaining. At just 12-minutes the film moves along at a nice pace but what I was impressed with most is how writer/director Ava DuVernay managed to make the thing so touching. There were several moments in the film where I wasn't really sure where the movie was going. There's an admirer that keeps walking around and there's another sequence where a stranger walks up to the mother just to tell her how great of a job she's doing. In today's time I found it quite hard to believe that a stranger would just walk up to someone like this but the scene works extremely well as does the ending. Melissa De Sousa and James Black are both very good in their roles even with the limited dialogue. I think a few things could have improved the film including leaving the song off the picture as this really adds nothing and instead it doesn't allow us to connect with the characters until after it's over. It's also rather refreshing to see a story aimed at black audiences that isn't full of negative stereotypes. Not perfect but certainly well-made and worth watching.
