Screeching meets social-minded speechifying in Black Coffee, which can’t decide whether it wants to be a fluffy and disposable romantic comedy about kicking a gold-digger to the curb and finding love with a likeminded young professional, or a slightly more serious-minded relationship movie-cum-treatise on the present-day African-American urban experience.

It’s obviously important to writer-director Mark Harris that Black Coffee makes a statement about African-Americans supporting African-American entrepreneurs and businesses, which is fine. But this theme is rather unsophisticatedly interwoven, and Harris’ film is too shot through with trite expressions of familiar scenarios, and additionally weighed down by phony redemption and catharsis pegged to its significantly boorish supporting characters, to connect in any meaningful way. It may be packaged slightly differently, but this Coffee is a cheap, tepid store-brand blend, of dubious quality. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (One Village Entertainment, PG-13, 85 minutes)