Throwback Thursday Debate: Love & Basketball vs. Brown Sugar

Chemistry

It is hard to compare the acting between these two movies. Not because the protagonists gave poor performances; but they had chemistry. It wasn’t the first time that Sanaa and Taye (The Best Man) were romantic interests and that goes for she and Omar as well (The Wood).

I had a hard time believing that Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan grew up in the same neighborhood. That just didn’t seem right to me. Truth be told, as good of a job I felt Taye Diggs did in Brown Sugar, any of the other black actors who are always in these movies could have played the part and the chemistry would have been the same.

What made Love & Basketball a really good movie was the chemistry. Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan played very well off of each other because they were actually seeing each other at the time. Their moments of tension or looks of love felt real because to some extent that was how they really felt about each other. Love & Basketball gets this one by a landslide.