Parents' Guide to Two Can Play That Game

The trouble with Two Can Play That Game is that the heroine, despite her smarts and accomplishment, is so unlikable. Arrogant, manipulative, smug, and overflowing with bad advice, she's meant to be a role model for women with man troubles everywhere, yet she seems petty and unfeeling. Her grievance with her previously-believed-to-be-perfect boyfriend is that he doesn't bow down to her sufficiently. She chooses to punish him for a slip even if it puts her supposedly valued relationship with him at risk.

Much as in the 1996 film The First Wives Club, the women here scheme against men for dominance and power. But in the earlier movie, the women have all been dumped for younger women by philandering husbands, men they don't want back. What they do want is to get their fair share of the marriages' accumulated wealth, so malice and inflicting pain seem understandable. In Two Can Play That Game, it's hard to find the justification for Shante's rigidly cruel behavior. She dumps her man so he will come back to her? He never wanted to leave her in the first place. When she recognizes she's gone too far, she reconsiders: "I thought you followed certain rules when a brother messes up to get him to come back." But she chose which rules to follow, so what kind of person does that make her?