Boomerang soundtrack3/5/2023 But, I thought that actually made her perfect for the role, that she was this formidable person and a match for Eddie Murphy, who also had an intrepid reputation as a ladies’ man.” He added, “I wanted the audience to feel like this would be a fair fight.”Īs Givens detailed in her 2007 memoir, “Grace Will Lead Me Home,” she retreated from the spotlight after “Boomerang.” She spent the next decade healing from her marriage to Tyson and raising her two young sons. “A lot of people were nervous that there was a lot of dislike in public because of her past with Mike Tyson. “Robin was a very controversial piece of casting,” Hudlin said in the audio commentary that commemorated the film’s 10th anniversary. Her admission that her time with him had been “torture, pure hell, worse than anything I could possibly imagine” garnered little public sympathy in that pre-#MeToo era.Īfter their divorce a few months later, Givens’s career was never the same. Sitting next to a conspicuously subdued Tyson, Givens disclosed that he was a “manic depressive” who had repeatedly physically abused her. I was 13, and watching the “20/20” interview that Givens and Tyson did with Barbara Walters in September 1988. I remember the moment that stereotype really took hold. When she ended their yearlong marriage, she was publicly caricatured as a golddigger seeking fame and wealth. The star, a prodigy who had matriculated to Sarah Lawrence College at 15 and planned to go to medical school before pursuing acting full time, had married the heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson in 1988, only six months after meeting him, at the height of her career. I first became enamored with her when she played Darlene Merriman, the well-dressed, sharp-tongued, hypercompetitive student in the mainly white honors class on the ABC sitcom “Head of the Class.” As an awkward Black girl at a predominantly white high school myself, I overly identified with characters in similar situations like Darlene or Lisa Turtle (Lark Voorhies) from the sitcom “Saved by the Bell.” But unlike Lisa, who never seemed to have a love interest, Darlene always seemed in command, making me want even more to emulate her fashion sense and the ease with which she flashed her wit and smile.ĭespite Givens’s popularity on that show, when “Boomerang” premiered in 1992, it was her comeback vehicle. Her work ethic, confidence, intellect and medium-brown complexion were rare in a Hollywood that hardly ever cast African American women as romantic leads.Īnd that was all Robin Givens. “When Harry Met Sally” might have modernized the rom-com gender dynamics for my generation, but Jacqueline was an outlier. But I was also reminded why my 17-year-old self was so drawn to the film in the first place. 4 on the Billboard 200.Īs for “Boomerang,” seen 30 years later the women’s big hair and shoulder-pad suits make it seem dated, while Marcus’s sexism and the film’s slapstick homophobia are jarring. Produced by Kenneth Edmonds, known as Babyface, Daryl Simmons and Antonio Reid, known as L.A., it included Boyz II Men, A Tribe Called Quest and newcomer Toni Braxton, and reached No. Its soulful soundtrack, which I played on repeat during the summer of 1992, was also a hit. It was among the highest-grossing movies of the year, eventually earning $70 million domestically and $131 million worldwide. “We’re calling this our Cary Grant picture,” Brandon Tartikoff, then chairman of Paramount Pictures, told The Los Angeles Times, explaining that while audiences would get the “funny, smart, hip” Murphy they loved, the film would “mark a greater sensitivity” in his roles.ĭirected by Reginald Hudlin of “House Party” fame, “Boomerang” was, in many ways, a success. The idea was that he would play more complex characters, like the debonair advertising executive Marcus Graham in “Boomerang” (1992), his first and only rom-com. Having risen to stardom in the 1980s with a series of hit comedies - “Trading Places,” “48 Hrs.,” and “Beverly Hills Cop” - he entered the 1990s aiming for more culturally nuanced films. That’s because in 1992, “Boomerang” was intended to be the film that turned him into a romantic leading man. My attention, however, was supposed to be on Murphy. Played by Robin Givens, she was one of the few African American female characters to be the main love interest in a romantic comedy at the time. But I was drawn to the movie’s antagonist, Jacqueline Broyer, the glamorous, ambitious advertising executive. It was the summer before my first year of college, and I was enthralled by a movie (and its music) that had just arrived in theaters: “Boomerang,” starring Eddie Murphy.
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