Hitch

Andy Tennant’s 2005 comedy sets a professional dating coach against the one client he cannot fix, himself, once a tabloid columnist named Sara starts checking his work. Will Smith, who also produced, later spelled out the casting arithmetic to the Birmingham Post: an accepted myth held that two Black leads in a romantic comedy would not sell around the world, while a Black actor opposite a white actress was thought to travel but to be a problem inside the United States. Eva Mendes got the part. The grosses argued back, 179.5 million dollars in the United States and Canada against 192.1 million elsewhere. Its two most replayed scenes were never written. Tennant says the goodbye on the front steps began as three or four lines, grew out of a morning conversation with Smith and Kevin James, ran to five and a half pages and was shot in three hours; the door they knocked on for permission belonged to Sarah Jessica Parker. James improvised the dance lesson and Smith did not know what was coming. A good fit if you like that the two best scenes, the stoop goodbye and the dance lesson, were invented on the day rather than written. Not for you if you want the couple at the centre; the comic weight sits with Albert, not Hitch.