Film / Deliver Us from Eva

Deliver us from her.

Deliver Us from Eva is a 2003 black romantic comedy that is an updated take and somewhat subverted take on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. The titular Eva (Gabrielle Union) is the oldest daughter of a set of four girls, all grown, all beautiful, all successful. There's just one problem—she's a raging bitch to the three sisters' boyfriends, Tim, Mike, and Darrell, and they've gotten tired of her iron grip on the family unit. They hatch a scheme to hire Raymond (LL Cool J), a Casanova ladies' man, to woo Eva and make her fall in love with him, then ask her to move away with him. After they've left the city, they give him permission to dump her and go back to being a pickup artist. Ray, at first, isn't interested, but after seeing Eva in action, he decides he'll be in the Player Hall of Fame if he gets her to fall in love with him. But, in a classic turn, he genuinely falls for her as well, and now things have gotten even more complicated.

This film contains the following trope examples:

• The Ace: Ray. He's handsome, intelligent, has a good paying job, and despite being a player, does actually listen to women and treat them respectfully. He just doesn't stay with them very long until Eva comes along.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Played straight with Ray, who is a ladies man to the nth degree. He has a lot of bad boy charm and is an effective pickup artist, but unlike some of the other examples of the trope, Ray does genuinely care about women instead of only trying to sleep with them. He’s cordial and polite at all times even if he’s out seducing a lady and he does listen to their problems and comfort them.
• Alpha Bitch: Eva is this in her sibling group. She’s the eldest and had to step up to the role of single parent, in a way, when the four girls lost their parents. She is a judgmental, uncompromising bitch, but it is explained she got that way out of being so overprotective of her sisters after losing their parents.
• Artistic License – Law: All three boyfriends should have immediately been brought up on kidnapping and conspiracy charges for what they did to Ray, but since this is a rom-com, they just get stern lectures. Eva even bothers to apologize to them for being so mean. Is it a nice gesture from her? Yes. However, her sisters overlooking a federal crime just because they love these guys is inexcusable.
• Bad Date: Eva and Ray’s first date is a disaster. He shows up late, but swears he had a reason, takes her there in his meat wagon, and then when they arrive, it turns out he accidentally took her to a place that she had shut down because she’s a health inspector and the owner is very much holding a grudge, which makes them leave since she’s entirely sure he tampered with the food. It’s only by a miracle that she gives Ray a second chance after messing up inadvertently.
• Bait-and-Switch: Eva deliberately misleads her sisters and friends when telling them about her romantic dance and dinner with Ray. They're all dying to know if she slept with him and she politely tells them he was a perfect gentleman, to their dismay. Then she adds this bit, complete with arm gestures, "...and then we burnt a hole in the floor!" Her sisters and friends all crack the hell up and cheer upon hearing it.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Eva and Ray have this relationship right off the bat. She spends most of her time talking down to men, probably thanks to the guys her sisters all chose to date who are kind of awful, but Ray isn’t put off by it nor is he scared of her. The first time she really pays him any mind is after he’s able to eat her notoriously spicy baked beans without a problem, and from there, the ice slowly starts to melt between the two of them.
• Broken Bird: Based on what the sisters describe, Eva wasn't a monumental bitch in the beginning, but losing their parents forced her to become their Mama Bear, hence the domineering attitude. However, when Eva's alone, we see that she's definitely lonely and isn't content being single and rejecting every possible suitor, so she eventually compromises enough to try dating Ray when she realizes she actually does like him.
• The Bully: Eva, big time. The only people she treats kindly are her sisters. Everyone else is basically considered an enemy that she tries to berate within an inch of their sanity. Lucky for her, dating Ray mellows her out.
• The Casanova: Ray is the total package. He’s handsome, charming, successful, and is very, very good at seducing women, which is why the men hire him to seduce Eva so she’ll leave them alone with her sisters at long last.
• Chick Magnet: Ray, naturally. He IS played by LL Cool J, after all, and the LL stands for “ladies love,” which is true.
• Compensated Dating: The girls’ boyfriends hire Ray to seduce Eva to get her out of their hair.
• Complete-the-Quote Title/ Pun-Based Title: “Deliver us from evil.”
• Complexity Addiction: The boyfriends decide to hire Ray to seduce Eva so she'll leave them alone. They could, you know, actually bother standing up to her or having a serious conversation with her sisters about her constant verbal abuse. They could also just go date someone else, but yet this scheme is what they decided on instead.
• Control Freak: Eva controls almost every aspect of her sisters' lives and it's driving their boyfriends crazy enough to do what they end up doing in the movie.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The boyfriends could have just gone out with girls who don't have a super evil, domineering older sister that runs their lives. They're selfish enough to not want to leave them and instead reason that hiring Ray is easier than trying to stand up to her. After all, they live in Los Angeles, so it's not like beautiful black women are in short supply in LA.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Over the course of dating Ray, Eva starts to finally loosen up. The biggest change in the story is after she and Ray sleep together. She arrives to her sister’s shop the next day and the shop’s occupants all live vicariously through her as she admits she and Ray banged the hell out of each other.
• Destructo-Nookie: Ray and Eva don’t even make it to the bed. They collapse in front of it and have rather rigorous sex, according to Eva.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Eva is indeed an awful, abusive person, but the boyfriends hiring someone to break her heart so she'll leave her sisters alone is much, much too cruel for someone who is just a bitch and genuinely means well. It's especially cruel when they fake Ray's death, knowing that Eva and the girls lost their parents when they were young, so losing the love of her life is doubly tragic and cruel of them to do. Then there's the fact that faking Ray's death also means all of Ray's friends, family, and former lovers are now in mourning over him. They really Did Not Think This Through.
• Disappeared Dad / Missing Mom: Unfortunately, the girls' parents died when they were little, so poor Eva had to figure out how to feed four mouths growing up. She managed to take care of them all and make sure they all had homes and good jobs, but it also left her with little time to be herself and enjoy things on her own since she was too busy fretting over her sisters. Ray notes this about her and is able to get her to have some fun every once in a while, which her life sorely lacked.
• Does Not Like Men: Eva had a vicious breakup with her ex boyfriend Lucius, so she has a huge chip on her shoulder when it comes to men. She lists off the bad men stereotypes she’s dated to Ray, but he’s completely unaffected and isn’t scared off by her mean demeanor or her rants about how many sorry men she’s dated before.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Eva's constant berating is portrayed as her being difficult rather than outright abusive. By modern standards, what she says to all the men around her is actually toxic and abusive behavior. It wouldn't be okay if you switched their genders. Not at all, in fact.
• Easily Forgiven: Inexplicably, the three sisters take their sorry boyfriends back even after finding out they hired Ray to take Eva away from them.
• Extreme Doormat: The three boyfriends view themselves as this compared to Eva, who always gets in the last word and always is in control of her sisters, and subsequently, their relationships with said sisters.
• Fanservice: Eva is in a few nice outfits that show off her figure, but there is at least one scene where she's in a silk slip. Raymond has a habit of wearing very tight shirts, so the fanservice is spread fairly in that regard.
• Freudian Excuse: Eva is so mean to everyone—and men especially—from a couple of traumatic events. First, their parents died when they were young and they apparently didn't have living relatives who could help support them, so Eva was forced to step up and become the family's breadwinner. She supports her sisters financially and keeps a very tight rein on their lives due to having inherited the massive responsibility of raising them and taking care of them. A side effect of that means she basically became a Mama Bear. She is fiercely protective of them and they all listen to her since she's the oldest and smartest. Second, Eva had a chance to be with a guy named Lucius long term, but she would have had to make sacrifices she didn't want, so she ultimately broke it off with him and she's had a chip on her shoulder ever since.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Eva. There is a reason her name is just a syllable off from “evil.” She flies off the handle into rage over most things and only mellows out after dating Ray for a while.
• Hands-On Approach: Ray “teaches” Eva how to play pool, but is really just using it as an excuse to get close and seduce her. She’s aware of it, though, and plays along since she likes him anyway.
• Henpecked Husband: A rare subversion with Eva. She's not married to any of the three boyfriends, but she still behaves like a "nagging wife" with how many demands she makes of them, how often she insults them, and how she controls her younger sisters, who basically do anything Eva says.
• Hunk: Ray, very much. He’s got a good job, is intelligent and charismatic, and of course, is handsome and muscular to the point of turning heads.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Ray is working, unbeknownst to Eva, at a restaurant and he overhears her berating a manager. He’s so impressed by how vicious she is that it makes him decide to let the bad boyfriends hire him to woo her, stating he’ll be in the Player Hall of Fame if he gets a woman like that to fall for him. Thankfully, though, they do both fall in love for real.
• Jerkass: All three boyfriends, for hiring Ray to seduce Eva just so she’ll stop controlling her siblings so much. Granted, when we see Eva in action, their lives are definitely a living hell thanks to her, but the fact that they went so far as to kidnap Ray and fake his death so Eva would still move away lands all three of them firmly in this territory and they never leave.
• Jerk Ass Has A Point: Many of the criticisms that Eva launches at the three boyfriends are actually legitimate. She often wants them to prepare for things that their sisters will need, like taking care of their health or saving up for marriage or a baby. The problem is she just happens to convey the information as condescendingly and insultingly as possible. She's also not wrong about the three of them not having their sisters' best interests in mind long before Ray tells her the truth, that they hired him to seduce her so she'll leave them alone.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Eva. At first, it’s easy to understand why the girls’ boyfriends all absolutely hate her. She’s controlling, emotionally and verbally abusive, and she’s very sexually repressed based on how she behaves, but as the movie goes on, we’re shown that Eva does this out of what she feels is necessity. Once she starts dating Ray, she is more relaxed and comfortable in her own skin and she stops trying to control every single facet of her sisters’ lives.
• Karma Houdini: All three boyfriends never see the inside of a jail cell despite the fact that they kidnap Ray and fake his death. This situation is even worse considering one of them is a cop.
• Lady in Red: Eva wears a beautiful red sequin gown to an event she and Ray are attending related to her work.
• Ladykiller in Love: Ray is such a smooth ladies’ man that he actually gets caught by two women and not only does he manage to calm them down, he gets them to agree to a goddamn threesome instead of kicking his ass for cheating or at the very least, not making it clear he wasn’t seeing them exclusively. At first, he says no to the proposal to seduce and dump Eva, but once he sees her in action, he decides he’ll go in the Player Halls of History if he can get a woman that mean to fall in love with him. This is then subverted when he falls for her and changes his mind; the original plan was for him to seduce her and make her want to leave her sisters alone, but once they fall in love, he doesn’t want to dump her or convince her to leave since he realizes he has genuine feelings for her. Unfortunately, though, that puts him at odds with the sisters’ boyfriends, who come up with an idiotic “solution” to said problem. Namely, kidnapping him and faking his death.
• Lets Wait Awhile: Attempted, then subverted. Ray tries to be a gentleman and insists he won’t sleep with Eva, shooing himself out the door, much to her disappointment. Then, a moment later, he throws caution to the wind and comes back, picking her up and carrying her to the bedroom while she cheers.
• Letting Her Hair Down: It's gradual, but Eva does start to open up and let herself have fun dating Ray. The first notable change in her demeanor is after she and Ray sleep together; she walks into the salon using slang and being friendly and loud like her sisters, who then immediately grill her about it.
• Liar Revealed: Ray does eventually break out of where the shitty boyfriends had him captured and arrives to the funeral to tell Eva the truth. Naturally, she's enraged and breaks it off with him, then takes the job in Chicago just to be away from him.
• Mama Bear: Eva is the eldest sister, and their parents died when they were young, so Eva was Promoted to Parent and became a very insistent Mama Bear to her three younger sisters. She means well, but she's acerbic to the point of parody and doesn't mellow out until she starts seeing Ray.
• Mating Dance: Ray and Eva attend an event for work together and end up slow dancing, eventually going home to have sex when things get too hot to handle anymore.
• Monochrome Casting: Inverted from the usual expectations. The film does feature a couple of white characters, but they are only minor characters. The entire main cast with speaking lines is African-American.
• New Old Flame: “Luscious” Lucius is Eva’s ex-boyfriend. He shows up at a dance where Eva has asked Ray to be her date, but since Ray runs late, she bumps into Lucius and his new fiancée, who try to shame and humiliate her, but luckily, Ray shows up at the exact right moment to rescue her. He also one-ups Lucius, too—Lucius insists that he knows the mayor, but he doesn’t really. The mayor ignores both of them in order to congratulate Ray, who just put on the best meat presentation, enough that the mayor is thrilled with him and is eager to meet Eva, thus allowing her to instead one-up her shitty ex-boyfriend.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The boyfriends introduce Ray and Eva, hoping that Ray will seduce her and with Eva now having a beau, she'll leave them alone. Well, Ray accidentally falls in love for real and so now he's besties with all their girlfriends and Eva, and they're out hundreds of dollars while still having to deal with Eva's constant abuse. In fact, falling in love with Ray causes Eva to actually turn down the excellent promotion she earns so she can stay with him. This then motivates the boyfriends to kidnap him and fake his death so Eva will take the Chicago job.
• No Accounting for Taste: The film never gives a single reason why the three sisters love their boyfriends, nor does it even attempt to explain how the sisters forgave their boyfriends for actively trying to rip their family apart.
• Pass the Popcorn: Both groups of boyfriends and girlfriends watch Eva and Ray’s first real interaction from afar at the barbecue. They initially met outside of church where Ray pretends to be dating someone, then later tells Eva it didn’t work out, scoring him some sympathy points.
• Promoted to Parent: Part of the reason why Eva is such a bitch from hell is that their parents died when they were little, so poor Eva had to find a way to support four people until they were all old enough to seek employment. She became the family's sole breadwinner for a while, so she developed an overprotective streak for her younger siblings that causes their boyfriends to have to suffer emotional and verbal abuse from her constantly. It doesn't excuse her behavior in any way, but it does explain why she's like that.
• The Reveal: Ray manages to break free and runs to the funeral, confessing everything to Eva. She’s naturally enraged and dumps him, refusing to listen when he spends months trying to convince her he loves her for real. Eventually, though, he shows up in Chicago on a white horse and confesses again, revealing he’s willing to leave his entire life in LA behind to be with her. Eva relents and reveals she fell for him too, and they ride off to happily ever after.
• Rom Com Job: Ray is a food presentation expert and Eva is a health inspector.
• Secret Test of Character: Two versions, one plot related and one character related.
  • The first is Ray eating Eva’s incredibly spicy baked beans at the barbecue where he’s been invited to check her out. He reveals he loves spicy food and Eva is immediately impressed that he likes her notoriously hot baked beans.
  • The second is Eva absolutely destroys a particular restaurant for being so below code and is invited to her boss’ office only to find out the man she berated was actually just pretending to be a lowly manager when in reality, he’s a big wig who offers her an excellent position…in another city. Eva is torn between taking the great job but leaving her sisters or turning it down, but always wondering what could have been. At first, she declines the job since she wants to stay with Ray too, but then the idiot boyfriends kidnap him and fake his death so Eva will take the job in another state and leave.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Eva is very much not looking for love, but Ray finds her anyway thanks to her sisters’ boyfriends hiring him to seduce her. Once she realizes she can’t scare him off, they actually do get along and eventually genuinely fall for each other.
• Shipper on Deck: Two of the sisters immediately notice that Eva is attracted to Ray and vice versa and encourage her to give him a chance. The youngest sister is more doubtful, but eventually she also comes to ship it.
• Stupid Evil: Yes, Eva is a bitch, and yes, she made the boyfriends' lives hell, but resorting to literal kidnapping just to get rid of an awful, nagging person in your life is outright stupid. It's only due to lackluster writing that (A) the girls forgive their boyfriends for trying to break up their family and (B) Ray doesn't press charges, even though he very much should have done so.
• Too Dumb to Live: The three boyfriends hire Ray to seduce and dump or at the very least, seduce and make Eva move away so she’ll stop hounding them constantly. If the girls find out about it, they’re all in a world of trouble, but this is then made even worse when after Ray reveals he fell for Eva for real and refuses to dump her or move away with her, the boyfriends then kidnap him and fake his death so that Eva will now take the job in another state she was just offered. The most unbelievable part of the story is that the sisters find out…and actually forgive their boyfriends for trying to break up their family.
• The Unfair Sex: Eva, in spades. If she were a man treating her brothers' girlfriends the way that Eva treats her sisters' boyfriends, this movie would have a much, much darker tone. Her behavior is unacceptable, but since she's a woman, it's passed off as "she's just a bitch" rather than being more serious and accusing her of emotional and verbal abuse, which she definitely is participating in when it comes to her sisters' boyfriends.
• Uptight Loves Wild: True to the rom-com formula, Ray starts to get through to Eva by being respectful, but also standing up to all her insults and taking them in stride. In turn, Eva actually does start to let her hair down and not be such a judgmental bitch to him, her sisters, and eventually their boyfriends.
• Villain Has a Point: Only barely. The boyfriends do have a point that Eva's iron grip on her family is messing with their ability to be happy with their own significant others, and Eva does actually need to get a social life so she'll stop obsessing over the welfare of her very grown sisters. The sisters are also too dependent on Eva for advice and needed to give her more time to herself so she could be happy. But all of that doesn't change the fact that the men are still wrong for hiring Ray just to get rid of Eva for being mean, and it's even worse that they commit a federal crime when it looks like the scheme is about to fall apart.
• Was It All a Lie?: Eva’s main reason for denying Ray’s confession at the end is learning that he was hired by her sisters’ boyfriends to seduce her so she’ll leave them alone. When he comes back at the end, he finally manages to convince her he was for real, mostly by showing up in Chicago and telling her he gave up his life in LA to come after her.
• You Need to Get Laid: Eva, big time. Her sisters, the boyfriends, pretty much everyone agrees that part of why Eva's so damn mean is not getting to play bouncy castles with a fine gentleman. She is infinitely happier (and easier to deal with) after she and Ray sleep together for the first time.