My immense hatred for Spike Lee’s body of work not withstanding, “She Hate Me”, while making a statement of the sheer cruelty women are capable of for reach of their goals and manipulating men, is possibly one of Lee’s worst. Jack, the dumbest asshole ever depicted on film, is the true model of the intelligent man who isn’t smart enough to say no to a woman just because she flashes her cleavage and gives lustful stares to other women in front of him. Lee may not be the smartest man alive, but he is smart enough to show how wicked, manipulative, and objectifying women can be, and he shows how utterly unrealistic people can talk in his world. While posing for women to make money one girl proclaims, “Now you know what it feels like to be the sex object.”
Thanks, Lee, shove it down our throats why don’t you?
Lee though is a lot like an eighth grader who makes a film and it’s obvious he’s attempting rather desperately to make a statement about politics, government, and the evil white man, but can never hit the mark. The message in the film comes off as immensely forced, and jumbled. What is the point of this film? What is the message? What is he trying to tell the audience? What with the odd sperm sequences, the drawn out sex scenes, the utterly meandering storyline. Lee goes off in to all sorts of directions from a film about family, corporate corruption, and the woman manipulating the man, it just can never find a direction and stick with it.
And the different themes present during this never connect in some sort of allegory at all, and there is no subtext, so Lee’s film doesn’t make a lick of sense. Not to mention it’s a rather grueling practice of cynicism that Lee has never been able to tackle with enough effectiveness. Neil Labute was able to create films that reveal the worst that humanity has to offer because his revelations were realistic and set in rather interesting locales. Lee on the other hand feels inclined to force us to sympathize for pretty rich people using one another just to make more money. Labute’s stories of human cruelty reached deep down in to our vulnerabilities. Loneliness, companionship, manipulation, humiliation, and our lack of sympathy while degrading each other.
“She Hate Me” is about a handsome rich black man being used by gorgeous rich women to get them pregnant, and if the film isn’t ridiculous enough, we’re supposed to believe a woman like Monica Bellucci is having trouble getting laid. Lee can’t find the right story he wants to tell, so he constantly veers off in to numerous sub-plots involving numerous characters, so we never have a sense of the story Lee is attempting to tell the audience. I had no idea where he was getting at with all these sub-plots, so “She Hate Me” is a ridiculous junky regurgitation from Lee to his fans. Lee seems to want to make some sort of message about corporate corruption, prostitution, and the evil white man, but it’s lost in the muck of ridiculous scenes, bad acting, horrible dialogue, and constantly meandering sub-plots that go nowhere. “She Hate Me” is not Lee’s best, but there’s no difference between his best and his worst.