Deliver Us from Eva is a romantic comedy directed by Gary Hardwick. While Eva Dandridge (played by Gabrielle Union) was a teenager, her parents died in an automobile accident, leaving her in charge of her three baby sisters. When her high school boyfriend Lucius Johnson (played by Dorian Gregory) dumped her, she abandoned her childhood ambition of managing a horse farm to become a civil servant and a waitress to support her sisters. When they were old enough to get jobs, she was promoted to a position of LA health inspector and she resigned as a waitress, yet they still continue to rely on her for advice. Eva perceives that her responsibilities preclude any further amorous relationships, though her younger sisters have boyfriends or husbands. Yet the men in her sister’s lives are frustrated because Eva advises them not to have sex, and when the film begins she even kicks the men out of one of her sister’s houses, where they are watching sports on television, to hold a book club meeting. The men retreat to a bar, where they plot to humble Eva by paying Ray Adams (played by LL Cool J) $5,000 plus expenses to trap her into falling in love with him and then later dropping her. The men try to follow a script similar to Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, while Black women, more clever than Black men, try to trump them by following a plot similar to that of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. Ray indeed plays his role, and for a time the three men are making headway with the three women. But Ray and Eva fall in love with each other. Ray, who was abandoned at birth and never stays in any one town very long, even applies himself so well to his job, for the first time in his life, that he becomes the head of the meat delivery company for which he has been working. Eva tells her sisters about the wonderful things that Ray does, and the three Black women now insist that their men measure up to the high standards of the Ray-Eva relationship. The three men are furious that Ray is not fulfilling the terms of his contract with them. Admitting that he unexpectedly fell in love with Eva, Ray agrees to pay back the money. However, the three abduct Ray, tie him up in a warehouse, and one of the men (an LAPD police officer) fakes his death, so a funeral service is planned. But Ray unties himself and goes to the funeral, where he admits to Eva the truth about the plot as well as his profound love. Eva, however, dumps him and moves to Chicago, where she receives a higher position. How Ray manages to win back her affection is the climax of the film, which shows the domestic power of African American women. MH