Somewhere near the height of Ashton Kutcher’s career, or on the way to that peak, he appeared in this film. The premise is simple enough: a beautiful young Black woman (played by Zoe Saldaña) brings her lily-white boyfriend home to meet her family. Naturally, the dynamic is best created by another comedically brilliant performance by the late, great Bernie Mac, who as the dad of the house lords over everyone (except his wife and daughters) with sardonic authority and effortless command.
Kutcher plays the bumbling outsider well, tripping over cultural cues like a baby ape on ice. The racial tension is dialed up just enough to provoke awkward laughter rather than riots in the streets. It’s absurd, if you think about it, that humans can even attempt to make a film about racial interaction when their cultural worlds are so often planets apart. Watching them try to bridge it on screen is like watching a lemur explain quantum physics to a gorilla. And yet, somehow, it works here. The tension, the miscommunications, and the small cultural “aha” moments give the story both its humour and its tiny kernel of truth.
The real brilliance, of course, is in the subtle chaos Bernie Mac brings. His booming voice, scornful eye rolls, and instinctive timing put the backbone into any contrived comedy. You start to envy his confidence, his ease, his ability to command a room with a single eyebrow lift. The jokes land not because they’re perfectly constructed, but because they feel earned. Families are messy. Culture is messy. Humans are messy. They know it, even if they pretend they don’t.
The film has its classic rom-com trappings: misunderstandings, cringe-worthy moments, and a few eye-roll-inducing lines. But it also sneaks in small truths about love, identity, and human imperfection. We laugh at the awkwardness of humans trying to fit together across cultural divides. Comedy becomes a mirror, reflecting just how fragile and absurd our social rituals, rites and boundaries are.
At the end of the day, the film works because it doesn’t shy away from humanity’s simple contradictions. It celebrates the chaos, the tension, the laughter, and the occasional wince. If you watch it with a sense of humor and a little patience, it’s a sly little commentary on the ways humans fumble through their own social absurdities while pretending they’ve got it all figured out. And that, in itself, is a fine kind of entertainment.
