'Just Wright': Queen Latifah and Common's chemistry is just wrong

Romantic chemistry in the movies is a mysterious thing; you can't quite say what it is, but you know when it's there (see, this week, Crowe and Blanchett in "Robin Hood") and when it isn't. And in "Just Wright," it isn't.

Queen Latifah, as single 30-something physical therapist Leslie Wright, is her usual warm and relaxed self — whether Leslie is with the object of her affections, Scott McKnight (Common), or not. Nothing much happens between the two, even when things happen. You don't even root for them to end up together so as to see Leslie happy, as she seems pretty happy already.

Directed by Sanaa Hamri, "Just Wright" meticulously goes through its romantic-comedy paces. Leslie and Scott (who's an NBA star, with Leslie's adored home team the New Jersey Nets) meet cute, at a gas station.

Trouble intervenes, in the form of Leslie's gold-digging godsister Morgan (Paula Patton, lovely but ill-directed), who's long yearned to be an NBA wife. Nonetheless, Leslie and Scott are thrown together — he gets a possibly-career-ending injury that only she can treat.

Soon, she's cutely spouting off his early-career stats, he's revealing to her that he likes to play soulful jazz music in his secret piano room, and we all know where this is going.

And that's fine — but there's no reason for it to go there, other than that these two people are in a Hollywood romantic comedy.

As played by Common (who's one of the funny thugs in "Date Night"), Scott doesn't have much personality, and Leslie is so pleasantly even-tempered we barely even notice that she's lonely.

Latifah has an appealing way of always seeming to have an eyebrow slightly raised; in movies, she's most successfully the down-to-earth presence around which other characters flail. You wonder what she's doing here, succumbing to rom-com cliché (she even does one of those morning-after dances alone in bed, after a romantic night, sheet firmly and somewhat magically attached to her collarbone).

"Just Wright" has the right actress — in the wrong movie.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com