How do you deal with relationships, family, and marriage when you’re knocking on 40’s door? 35 and Ticking follows the lives of Victoria (Tamala Jones), Zenobia (Nicole Ari Parker), Cleavon (Kevin Hart), and Phil (Keith Robinson) — all friends hovering around the age of 35 and struggling to build the families they’ve always imagined.
While Zenobia is still looking for a man, Victoria is married to a man who doesn’t want children. Cleavon, meanwhile, is too geeky to chase his dream woman Falinda (Meagan Good), and Phil is already married with children, but his wife is not very interested in being a mother. All four of them try to rectify their romantic lives and futures while their biological clocks tick away.
35 and Ticking is among a sparse list of all black cast movies theatrically released in 2011, and director/radio personality Russ Parr brings together a talented cast and gives some much needed screen time to actors who can perform if given the right script.
Besides the main actors, Jill Marie Jones embodies Coco, a woman who had kids too young and wants to relive her childless and husbandless days without regard for her family, while Dondre Whitfield plays Austin, a man who cannot see his present wife as the future mother of his children.
On the more comedic side, Clifton Powell captures humor as Zenobia’s online dating match Zane, an ex-gangster who wants to impress with his bourgeois airs but only embarrasses himself by incorrectly pronouncing French words on the dinner menu. And there’s the arrogant yet memorable NBA star Nick West (Darius McCrary) who introduces himself in third person — ‘This is Nick West‘ — and comes with his own three-man-posse-laugh-track. The cast is rounded out by Mike Epps and Wendy Racquel Robinson, who play the fun-to-eavesdrop-on arguing couple across the hall and Kym Whitley who plays that woman who is always on her cell phone.
These extra laughs from supporting characters may come at the expense of scenes that would have further developed the complexity of the main characters. There are no scenes of Zenobia single and lonely and no realities of life like friends who aren’t always there when you call. We’re left to wonder why the characters feel so empty when no one in the film has the perfect life that they so desperately desire and their lives don’t seem that empty at all.
As the title suggests, the film is likely to resonate with the 30+ age group but less likely to interest a younger crowd that is too busy frolicking in their teens and 20s to fantasize about their 30s and when they do want to think that far in the future, they certainly don’t want to envision an unflattering picture.
Though it turns out the mid-life crisis has an upswing.
In the end, we fast forward to one year later, to couples who have moved forward, forged new loves and commitments, and gotten over that hump despite the uncertainties of being single and the tensions of imperfect marriages.
Director Russ Parr assures us not to worry. You’ll overcome your nervousness and get with the girl of your dreams. You’ll find a man who may have been under your nose the whole time. Your mutating eggs won’t stop you from having a baby.
35 may be stressful, but give it time, you’ll have it all figured out by 37.
Watch the trailer.
They’ll have it figured out by 37??? Hahaha! That’s hilarious.
Hmm…are you recommending this movie?
Hmm. It doesn’t have my stamp, really. But it has some hilarious parts. And with the state of black movies last year, ‘I Will Follow’, ‘Jumping the Broom’, etc., I think it’s watchable. Aesthetically, it’s at best a TV movie. If you happen to watch it and this film doesn’t at least tickle you just a little, then I invite you to watch ‘The Heart Specialist’ – then perhaps, we can appreciate the deplorable state of black cinema in the past year, 2011.
But, give it a watch if u haven’t yet. I found one character, the NBA star, especially funny. But that is not saying anything about the film in its entirety.
Oh. Well that doesn’t sound promising at all. It sounds like I’d have to be bored out of my mind before I would consider watching this.
Lol. Something like that. Sometimes u just really want to see a black film, a current film. And there aren’t that many around u know.
-is this radio Russ Parr?
Yeah, that’s right! He’s a director now.