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Jessica Alba is one of those people everyone knows is famous, but few know why. Does a short stint on a failed TV series (Dark Angel) qualify you for the adoration of millions? Apparently so, at least if you look like Alba: At the screening of Honey I went to, the audience erupted into applause and whistling as her name and face came on screen.
If only Alba could back up her looks with talent or success, she'd really have something. Completely out of her league even in this lightweight, feel-good movie, Alba plays Bronx dancer Honey Daniels. Honey works days in a record store and nights as a bartender, nursing her dreams of toe-tapping success. When she's discovered by a sleazy music video director (David Moscow), she quickly catapults from dancing in the streets to choreographing moves for the likes of Tweet, Blaque and Jadakiss (all of whom helpfully make cameos to bolster their songs on the sound track).
But stardom has its price, as Honey soon learns when she has to give up teaching cute li'l street urchins to dance at the rundown community center, and her mentor has her blacklisted because she won't sleep with him. Even the love of her boring, barber boyfriend (Mekhi Phifer, smiling and collecting a paycheck) can't help. What's a plucky dancer to do? Throw a climactic benefit concert, of course.
This is predictable, cardboard filmmaking from a music-video director who only seems at home when he's filming characters making music videos. The script (co-written by one of the writers of Glitter!) is predictable and full of cliches, and watching Alba spout street slang is especially painful. Another star with a little more presence—maybe Jennifer Lopez in her pre-Bennifer days—could have at least brought some spunk to the role, but Alba is a charisma vacuum. Her upcoming Into the Blue with Paul Walker may very well create a personality void that will destroy the universe.
The simplistic plot and hip-hop sound track would work well in a music video, and if Honey were three minutes long, and had no dialogue, it'd be completely entertaining. As a feature film, though, it's as confounding as Jessica Alba's fame.