Not Easily Broken

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Coming up today on Oprah we have Dave (Chestnut) and Clarice (Henson), whose marriage fell apart when Clarice suffered a broken leg in a car accident. Dave, a former baseball player with a struggling building business, became the sole earner in the house during Clarice's long rehabilitation. Dave, however, preferred to teach baseball to the kids and was never home, something his nagging and bitter mother-in-law (Jenifer Lewis), who blamed Dave for the accident, used to drive a wedge between he and Clarice...

The plot isn't anything to rush out and see with cliched developments lifted from some daytime soap or a made-for-TV drama. Director Bill Duke (remember the hard case from Predator and Commando?) attempts to loosen up the plodding pace with Dave's two comic sidekicks (Kevin Hart's sensitive guy gets the odd giggle), and the story's attempt to wriggle out of its formula by having Dave's head turned by single mother Julie (Maeve Quinlan), do nothing but add to the marriage-drama-by-numbers this is. The Christian message is shoved down the viewer's throat, too: the title refers to the special bond God ties around a couple on their wedding day; instead of seeing a marriage councillor when things are on the slide, Clarice and Dave see the local Bishop. Some of the dialogue doesn't ring true, either: a teenage boy, upon meeting Dave for the first time, greets him with a 'How do you do, sir?' No teenage boy would greet an adult in this way. "I don't want to go all Oprah on you," says one character, but Not Easily Broken goes ahead and does that anyway. A definite wait-for-the-DVD job, this.