General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Deliver Us from Eva

Deliver Us from Eva is a 2003 American romantic comedy directed by Gary Hardwick, starring Gabrielle Union as Eva Dandridge and LL Cool J (billed as James Todd Smith) as Ray Adams, the ladies' man her brothers-in-law pay to romance her and get her out of their lives. It was distributed by Focus Features and opened in Los Angeles and New York on February 7, 2003.¹ The film is widely considered a modern update on William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	February 7, 2003 (theatrical, Los Angeles and New York); Focus Features distributor¹^•³
Runtime and rating	105 minutes; rated R for sex-related dialogue¹^•⁴
Writers	James Iver Mattson and B.E. Brauner (story and screenplay), Gary Hardwick (screenplay)¹
Producers	Len Amato and Paddy Cullen; Barry Levinson and Paula Weinstein executive producers²
Box office	$17.3 million gross in the United States³
Critical scores	43% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (80 reviews) with a 75% Popcornmeter; Metascore 46 on Metacritic from 25 critic reviews³^•⁵
Literary source	A modern reworking of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew²

Spoilers

Plot

Eva Dandridge has been in charge of her three younger sisters, Kareenah (Essence Atkins), Bethany (Robinne Lee), and Jacqui (Meagan Good), ever since their parents died. Her constant interference in their lives has not endeared her to their husbands and boyfriends, Tim (Mel Jackson), Darrell (Dartanyan Edmonds), and Mike (Duane Martin), who would also like to close out and divide the family trust fund that Eva oversees.³ Their plan is to compensate a cash-strapped ladies' man, Ray Adams, to romance and distract Eva from her familial duties.³

The fee is $5,000, and the men want Ray to take her out, make her fall in love, and move with her to a town far away.⁶ Sparks fly between Ray and Eva, but the plan goes awry when he begins to fall for her for real.³ Roger Ebert, the longtime film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, noted that the film opened the same weekend as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, another romantic comedy built on a bet, and that it had the advantage of involving one bet rather than two.⁶

Production

The film began as an original screenplay by James Iver Mattson and B.E. Brauner, optioned in mid-1999, with Baltimore/Spring Creek Pictures shepherding development. In late 2000, writer-director Gary Hardwick, then editing his directorial debut The Brothers, was approached with the script; he recalled that it reminded him of The Taming of the Shrew, and he rewrote it with an African-American cast in mind. Filming was set to begin in October 2001.⁷

Hardwick later described the transformation more bluntly: the project was originally written as a mainstream film about three white girls from Seattle, and he turned it into a story about four black sisters from Atlanta.⁸ He cast Gabrielle Union, who had appeared for him in The Brothers, as Eva from the start, saying he was the first filmmaker to give her a leading role in position number one; LL Cool J, whom Hardwick had directed on the television series In the House, took the role of Ray, which the actor called his first real leading-man role.⁷

Hardwick said he made the film because he wanted to see Eva on screen: a woman who is strong, sexy, intelligent, mean, fierce, and formidable, a "turbo-feminist" who believes women are superior to men.⁹ In the film's framing, Eva works as a health inspector for the city of Los Angeles while having raised her sisters after their parents' deaths.¹⁰

The Taming of the Shrew connection

The film's debt to Shakespeare is explicit. Hardwick said the script reminded him of The Taming of the Shrew, and Eva is its modern equivalent of the "shrew."⁷^•⁹ Critics and scholars have read the adaptation as more than a transposition. Joyce Green MacDonald, a scholar of Renaissance drama at the University of Kentucky, argues that the film dispenses with Shrew's enshrinement of fathers' authority and legitimizes black women as desiring and desirable social subjects, contextualizing its love story within principles of black sociability and mutual support rather than the exchange of women.¹¹ A University of Michigan dissertation similarly reads the film as a Black romantic comedy that replaces the patriarchal structure of Shakespeare's text with an emphasis on family.¹²

Union has a double link to the play: after appearing as a side character in 1999's 10 Things I Hate About You, itself a Shrew adaptation, she took center stage in Deliver Us from Eva.¹³

Reception

Critical response was mixed. The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus held that Union and LL Cool J are appealing romantic leads but the film is too predictable and contrived; the site recorded 43% on the Tomatometer from 80 reviews against a 75% audience Popcornmeter.³ Metacritic gave it a Metascore of 46 from 25 critics, with 7 positive, 13 mixed, and 5 negative reviews, and a user score of 3.4 from 5 ratings.⁵

Reviewers singled out the leads. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "a shrewd and funny romantic comedy" and scored it 80, writing that it flows smoothly and looks great.¹⁴^•⁵ Jami Bernard in the New York Daily News called Union "a brilliant spitfire" and credited a rousing soundtrack and LL Cool J's star-making moves.⁵ Sean Axmaker, writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, found that what looks like a contrived sex comedy becomes "an insightful and sensitive look at knots that family ties create in adult romance."

Box office and legacy

The film grossed $17.3 million in the United States.³ A Washington Post profile of Hardwick reported that it made more than $20 million on a $6 million budget and debuted at number one in video rentals, extending his record as a director who delivers on time and for a profit.¹⁵ At the 2004 BET Comedy Awards it won Outstanding Box Office Movie, with LL Cool J and Gabrielle Union taking Outstanding Lead Actor and Lead Actress in a Box Office Movie, and the screenplay by Brauner, Mattson, and Hardwick was a Black Reel Award nominee for Best Screenplay.²

The film is now routinely grouped with the wave of Black romantic comedies of the late 1990s and early 2000s, alongside Love Jones, Love & Basketball, Brown Sugar, and Two Can Play That Game.¹⁶ It remains available on home video and streaming, including on Starz and through digital rental and purchase.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2003 to 2004 › Titles 1 to L

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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