Black Audiences Deserve Better Than ‘Relationship Goals’
This played-out rom-com has nothing to say and says it badly.
Remember the good ol’ days, when a pastor’s job was to sell you Jesus? It seems almost quaint in this prosperity gospel age, where every megachurch pastor has his own merch and his own version of a “holy book” for sale. This level of pastoral self-absorption (among many, many other things) has kept me out of the Christian church for well over a decade, but now it’s even seeping into the No. 1 tool of patriarchal propaganda: the rom-com.
In a poor man’s rip-off of Steve Harvey’s Think Like a Man book-to-screen series, Amazon MGM Studios has dumped on the streaming platform a romantic comedy film, Relationship Goals, from Michael Todd’s Christian dating book of the same name.
Starring Kelly Rowland and Method Man in what must be the biggest waste of their time yet, Relationship Goals defies its genre by being neither romantic nor funny—and barely a film. Instead, it serves as little more than a 90-minute commercial for Todd, his book and his megachurch—all of which appear throughout the film. Worst (or maybe best?) of all, it’s a shoddy commercial, as I left this film knowing absolutely nothing about any of the basic principles from his book. “This book changed my life!” multiple characters declare without any real explanation or challenge from any other character. And because the film has no discernible message or purpose, I can only assume the same of the book and will absolutely not be doing any research to confirm.
 | A guest post by
|