Product Description

A construction worker meets an aspiring singer;songwriter. He dreams of his own business; she dreams of fame. As they face the challenges of their chosen paths, they discover together that it's easy to build an affair...and hard to make it last.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Biographies
DVD ROM Features
Deleted Scenes
Documentary
Featurette
Filmographies
Interactive Menus
Multiple video angles

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7522 in DVD
• Brand: HBO HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2001-06-19
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 116 minutes

Amazon.com
He's a semi-employed construction worker and she's a music teacher with ambitions for a singing career. But when they meet at her Brooklyn brownstone their socio-economic differences melt away--or do they? This is the question that drives this 112-minute HBO movie based on Terry McMillan's best-selling novel. Zora wears fabulous clothes, decorates her hardwood-floored apartment with unusual furniture, and dines with her girlfriends at chichi restaurants, while Franklin can't even make regular child-support payments to his estranged wife. She's college educated; he doesn't have his GED. Sanaa Lathan (Love and Basketball) gives Zora dignity and grace throughout the film, while Wesley Snipe's Franklin starts out with those qualities but eventually degenerates into sullenness. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love and Basketball) starts out strong by making Brooklyn a third vibrant character and creating fun takes on the awkward events in every couple's early stages--meeting the friends, dining with the parents. But she loses her way a bit in the middle and seems to rush the end. With much of the transitional material of the book missing in the movie, female viewers may find the ending tough to swallow. The film is rated R for language, brief nudity (specifically of coproducer Snipes's rear quarters), and sexual content. --Kimberly Heinrichs

DVD features
The DVD offers a three-minute featurette (a trailer augmented with brief interviews with the stars and a reading of book excerpts by McMillan) and three "in character" performances by the two leads. --Kimberly Heinrichs

Customer Reviews

Outstanding Movie!
I found this to be one of HBO's finest. The title alone captures the intimacy of this movie. Sanaa blew me away first of all with her singing voice, it was her wasn't it? Wesley played a good role as always. Both of their attitudes seemed so real, like I was watching two people live their completely opposite lives, right next door to me. I never would have thought this movie would be this good. I applaud the movie producers, actors and HBO for promoting this. It is well worth the money and time. It is something every couple, whether your Afican American or not, should take the opportunity to watch. You can learn a lot from watching positive movies like this.

Disappearing Acts
If you've ever been in love with someone who was perhaps a bit out of your league and you foundd yourself constantly trying to compensate for that, then you know the rest. Wesley Snipes gives a powerful performance as a man who is a bit over his head and in love with Zora (Sanaa Lathan). Things heat up when the stakes get higher. Zora is pregnant, Franklin's out of work and their class differences become even more apparent when Zora just wants a night out on the town and Franklin just can't seem to get his act together. When the going gets tough, Franklin does a disappearing act of his own and Zora's on her own....this sounds like a familiar scenerio. The story is familiar but the ending is better. It looks like the family will make it after all. That's one for single mothers.

If you're looking for a good black lover story, then "Disappearing Acts" is one that will leave you with a warm feeling inside and a positive feeling about love relationships.

Disappointing Acts
"Disappearing Acts" is Terry McMillan's best novel--even better than "Waiting to Exhale," so it's surprising that nobody bothered to give it a film adaptation until now. Nevertheless, this HBO-only special is a huge disappointment to those who have already read the book, and those who haven't read it will wonder what the big fuss was about in the first place. Sanaa Lathan gives a reasonably solid performance as a school teacher struggling with a recording career in New York City. She crosses paths with ruffneck Franklin Swift, who's still married to his estranged wife and is the father of two kids; this dude has more baggage than LAX airport. Their relationship blossoms and faces its share of many hurdles, but the movie never lives up to the promise of the book. For one, Wesley Snipes, though a very good actor in his own right, is miscast as Franklin Swift. His performance lacks the ruggedness and street-sensibility that his role requires. Treach or even Malik Yoba would make a better Franklin. Plus, the movie dodges many issues that Terry McMillan's book addresses such as domestic violence and homophobia. In the book, Franklin Swift was a vicious homophobe, who never ran out of nasty things to say about gays. The movie had every opportunity to explore Franklin's sexual insecurities, but it ultimately cops out. At this point, it takes no psychic to figure out where this review is leading: "Disappearing Acts" isn't a total disaster, but it's a very bland, safe picture that does the book no justice.