COLORED SUGAR WATER

Continuing where she left off in All of Me (2000), Berry ignores the tenets of good storytelling and aims clearly for a single racial market. Lucy and Adel are African-American women who have transcended this awful society to achieve high-powered positions in the health and oil businesses, respectively. One night, watching black television together, they decide to call a psychic hotline. Enter Kuba, a male telepsychic, who knows just how to give Lucy her groove back. As the action plays out, both women deal with professional and romantic entanglements, though their jobs seem to require little effort and sexual betrayal is really no big thing. Spirituality tries to become a theme here as Lucy dabbles with Kuba’s voodoo, European religion, and Celtic mysticism. The vapid Adel’s idea of introspection is to sit and contemplate what she watched on TV the night before. A murderous white man Lucy was forced to fire provides the only pyrotechnics. All the characters here are stock, including the interchangeable heroines, whose goals seem to be to behave like teenagers as often as possible and “help someone of [their] own race move ahead.”

To writing what doodling is to painting.