Sparks fly in ‘Something New’ when a young black career woman Kenya McQueen (played by Sanaa Lathan), falls in love with a white man, Brian Kelly (played by Simon Baker), who runs his own small business. But this provocative romantic comedy won’t lead to any lynchings or rioting, not decades after Diana Ross’ two interracial marriages and all the other celebrities involved in cross-cultural romance. ‘Something New’ only pretends to break new ground as a way of distinguishing its conventional daydreaming plot from other hip hop-era dating movies such as ‘Brown Sugar,’ ‘Love Jones,’ ‘Breaking All the Rules’ and ‘Two Can Play That Game.’

All that’s new in this pleasantly watchable comedy-drama is the specter of racial bias. For Kenya, racism is a fact of her everyday life as a corporate lawyer for a big Los Angeles law firm. She may be under consideration to become a partner, yet her abilities are questioned by a white client. While hanging with her quartet of homegirls, Kenya discusses the single black woman’s dilemma: “Statistics say 42.4% of black women have never been married.” She points to a black male/white female couple as the reason why. 'Something New' addresses the complaint that all the good black men are taken by either down-low black men or white women. It is conceived to incite uproar among any viewers who insist that love be color specific. Kenya and friends are all looking for what they call an I.B.M. (Ideal Black Man) who not only has a job but “a well-paying job.”

That’s when Kenya is confronted with her own biases. Set up on a blind date, she meets Brian at one of the L.A. Starbucks run by Magic Johnson. Immediately resisting temptation, she eventually lets down her guard. After dating a too-perfect I.B.M. (Blair Underwood), Kenya realizes Brian is the only man who’ll let her be herself. He encourages her to get rid of her weave, to decorate her home in warm colors and give in to her passions. When explaining his landscape-architecture profession, Brian says “I take hard earth and make things bloom.” He’s not just talking about flowers. The sparks in ‘Something New’ are intended to break-up the rigid concept of race-based love connections. Watching Kenya blossom into a natural, self-possessed beauty makes ‘Something New’ less a revolutionary transformation than just simple, old-fashioned romantic-comedy fun.

Because ‘Something New’ comes from Focus Features, the same studio that made ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ it is helpful to understand how it smooths the rough edges of its controversial subject. Taking on the topic of interracial dating, the movie follows what happens between people of different backgrounds who seize the advantages of loosened cultural codes. If it was not shocking to watch Denzel Washington’s interracial hookup in ‘He Got Game’ (Milla Jovovich) or his white female friendships in ‘The Pelican Brief’ (Julia Roberts) and ‘The Bone Collector’ (Angelina Jolie), then the path to Lathan and Baker’s love match has already been paved. It only remains for liberal-minded Hollywood to state the obvious. Whatever issues Kenya’s friends and family raise about her dating outside her race are easily soothed by the filmmakers’ determination to promote a Love Is Blind message.

Be sure to note the film’s two truly radical moments: the first ever big-screen close-up of a hair-weave when Kenya takes Brian’s advice to go natural. And a satirical segment when Kenya obeys her bourgie mother (Alfre Woodard) and attends a cotillion held by black high society. The joke is that these ultra-blacks emulate the social pretenses of white society. When Kenya says yes to love, her decision carries the advice: Be true to yourself.