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Godfrey Cambridge plays Jeff Gerber, a happy-go-lucky, casually racist and sexist insurance salesman who’s oblivious to the fact that nearly everyone that knows him finds him unpleasant and unlikeable. One morning he awakens to find, to his shock and repulsion, that he’s turned black in his sleep. He blames it on his daily devotion to his tanning bed but not even his doctor can explain it. As far fetched as it sounds, they try to explore the drastic change in Jeff's appearance in a fairly logical way. Of course, it ultimately can't be explained and the film moves into making humorous social commentary.

Some of the jokes are a bit formulaic. For example, his supposedly liberal wife is horrified at being married to someone who's turned black. Jeff stays indoors after his race switch until he works up the nerve to head to “the colored part of town” to buy some skin-lightening creams which (of course) fail to work.

As if the spectacle of a top chef's attitude was not enough, this movie has excellent dialogue and absurd murders to please viewers even more. For that reason, and many others, it is my favorite screwball comedy and one which takes a step away from traditional screwball plots, yet still remains fresh and classic. Replacing the love-triangle between a feisty woman and two men is a dessert chef who is being fought over by two individuals, though one of those pursuits is not romantic. Natasha (Jacqueline Bisset) is a famous pastry chef who's been called upon by Maximillian Vandevver (Robert Morley), an obese food critic and good friend, to make a cake for the Queen of England. Her fumbling ex-husband, Robby (George Segal), is an overnight millionaire who owns various catchy fast food chains. This, of course, allows for Natasha and her co-workers to see him as the antichrist of cuisine. While harassing her in order to pitch an idea for a chain of omelets called H. Dumpty's, he discovers that she is being wooed by a famous Swiss chef. This particular chef is the one that orchestrated the dinner for the Queen, and the two met on silly terms in a kitchen. After spending the night with him, she wakes to find that he has been murdered in his own kitchen while attempting to make her breakfast. She finds him in an oven, which she and the authorities notice is a play on his specialty dish. Since she was the last one seen with him and her ex-husband was the last one to call his home, the two become suspects for the murder. The business deals that they have in other countries don’t leave them with much time to feel threatened, and Natasha finds herself shipped off to Venice by Max in order to meet a famous Italian chef and exchange ideas. Robby ends up following her there and becomes an even bigger nuisance. Soon after, his silly and semi-romantic cat-and-mouse game is overshadowed by another murder. The Italian chef, like the Swiss one, is killed in the fashion of h...

Mike White has a knack for making you feel uncomfortable. After all, he did pen Chuck and Buck as well as several episodes of Freaks and Geeks (both bodies of work are highly underrated). His characters can be so awkward that I sometimes need to look away.

Shannon plays a lonely executive assistant whose life spins out of control due to the untimely death of her dog, Pencil. Pencil was her life and now she has no life. That is until a kind veterinarian (Sarsgaard) offers Shannon a new dog to adopt. Not only does she fall in love with the dog but with the vet as well.