Billed as "a street romance," but really more of a road romance. The romancers themselves are from the "street" -- South Central L.A. -- but the romance blooms on the road, during a mail run up the Coast Highway to Oakland, with two illicit female passengers aboard the postal truck. The urban black lingo, the mating game, and other cultural matters are set down knowingly by writer and director John Singleton, but as in his Boyz n the Hood, there are sentimental detours that soften and weaken the impact (the pastoral utopian family reunion, the Big Sur scenic views). He's at his best when he's in no hurry; he is not at his best when he wants to get somewhere; at this point he hasn't figured out how to make a movie that needn't move. Janet Jackson, although not a very "representative" physical type, performs with self-assurance in her dramatic debut (her only singing is on the soundtrack), and she even dares some self-deprecation: "My ass is gettin' too big." The title comes from the fact that the hairdresser heroine is named Justice and writes poetry in her spare time -- oh, dear -- but this is a one-way pun: no other justice is in evidence. Samples of her verse are furnished by no less than Maya Angelou ("I am a woman, phenomenally./ Phenomenal woman, that's me"), but nothing is said about publishability. With Tupac Shakur, Tyra Ferrell, Regina King, Joe Torry. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd
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