The ANNOTICO Report
I'm not recommending this movie, just informing.
It's Usher, the music phenom, (as Darrell, as a hot New York DJ who's keen to start up his own record label),  is invited to a party by Mafia Boss, Chazz Palminteri, and meets the mobsters daughter, Dolly (Emmanuelle Chriqui), a law student, under circumstances that encourage a blossimg love.
 Sadly, then, misunderstandings arise and complications ensue, but nothing that a risibly lame climax can't solve in a heartbeat. and all's well in the new enlightened world.
Hey, Italian-Americans aren't gangsters any more — they're cuddly gangsters without a prejudiced bone in their trigger-fingers. And African-Americans aren't bullet-ridden victims — they're sweet bullet-ridden victims who look great atop a wedding cake.
How reassuring that yesterday's weary stereotypes have no place in today's better movies.

Darrell is black, a hot New York DJ who's keen to start up his own record label. Dolly is white, an aspiring lawyer who's the daughter of the local mob boss. In the Mix is beige, a forgettable romance comedy that's blind to the colour of its young lovers but, alas, not to the dictates of a tired genre — this thing is as formulaically bland as the rest of its Tinseltown kind.
The formula begins with the casting: Usher plays the male lead, selected in accordance with the time-honoured principle that popular movie actors are easily recruited from the ranks of popular musicians.
Now there's scant doubt that Usher can sing, and even less that he can dance, yet this flick puts neither of these documented talents to use. Instead, it asks the guy to act, but then — and this seems to be another time-honoured principle — saddles him with a script that would have reduced Olivier to an un-emotive hunk of granite.
So let's not be too harsh on Usher, who is neither more nor less here than a handsome enough presence with a chiselled physique attached to an amiable, if stiff, facade. Whether, on screen, he might prove anything better awaits the verdict of dialogue worth speaking.
Anyway, the formula continues when Usher's Darrell gets invited to DJ at a surprise party thrown by the Mafia honcho (a typecast Chazz Palminteri).
Of course, this being a putative comedy, the don is your friendly variety of mobster, an upstanding and big-hearted crook endowed with exemplary taste in suits along with a fine eye for mansions.
The party is in honour of his pride and joy. Yep, that would be Dolly (Emmanuelle Chriqui), just back from law school and ripe for amour, although not with that white-bread bore who's currently posing as her fianc?.
Well, what should break out during the fete but a drive-by shooting, a stroke of good luck that allows Darrell to take a bullet for the home team. Naturally, Daddy invites him to recuperate in the aforementioned mansion, thereby giving love's rose ample time to bloom. Which it does, leaving Dolly and a quick-healing Darrell to head off to that place where all trite romance comedies go: Where else but happy-montage-land.
See them laughing together in yoga class during the exertions of downward-facing-dog; see them making goo-goo eyes in the swimming pool while the moonlight dapples the chlorine; see them flirting with a first touch, a first kiss, a first ..... quick — cut to the gauzy dawn of the morning after.
Oh, romance must have its impediments, but the barrier of race is not among them here. No foul Soprano, this mobster dad is a model of tolerance, as are his charming acolytes like Fish and Fat Tony.
Ditto for Darrell's side of the domestic equation. Seems that his funny-buddy Busta and the proverbial Big Mama have yet to meet an Italian princess they don't instantly adore. And isn't it just the cutest when little Lexi, a lively tyke precocious beyond her 10 years, confronts our paramours with the chirping query, "Have you two done the nasty yet?"
But brace yourself, because this may come as a shock: Apparently, even among your nicest Mafioso clans, the occasional bad apple does exist. Sadly, then, misunderstandings arise and complications ensue, but nothing that a risibly lame climax can't solve in a heartbeat.
The heartbeat over, it's right back to heartwarming, to proving that all's well in the new enlightened world.
Hey, Italian-Americans aren't gangsters any more — they're cuddly gangsters without a prejudiced bone in their trigger-fingers. And African-Americans aren't bullet-ridden victims — they're sweet bullet-ridden victims who look great atop a wedding cake.
How reassuring that yesterday's weary stereotypes have no place in today's better movies.
In the Mix
Directed by Ron Underwood
Written by Jacqueline Zambrano
Staring Usher, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Chazz Palminteri
Classification: PG
Rating: *?
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