In his low-budget debut film Hav Plenty, writer/director/editor/actor Christopher Cherot stars as an overeducated, under-employed, temporarily homeless graduate student who is invited by a friend (Chenoa Maxwell) to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Over the course of the weekend, Cherot becomes the unwilling object of desire for Maxwell's unhappily married sister, Maxwell's overbearing college friend, and ultimately Maxwell herself. The relationship between Maxwell and Cherot forms the heart of Hav Plenty, and, unfortunately, it's the weakest part of the film. The first half-hour, before Maxwell starts pining for Cherot, is laugh-out-loud funny, keenly observed, and quirky in a way that's tremendously endearing. Cherot takes a refreshingly off-beat look at a segment of the population that's pretty much ignored by black filmmakers—the black bourgeoisie: college-educated, class-conscious professionals less concerned with race than status and social mobility. Movies in which filmmakers cast themselves as lovable losers inexplicably desired by hordes of sexy women are usually overbearing ego exercises, but Cherot is such an original, charming comic presence that the women's attraction to him is believable. As is the case with most romantic comedies, Hav Plenty is seldom funny and romantic in equal proportion, and during the film's second half, which focuses on Cherot and Maxwell's burgeoning relationship, the tempo falls off and the laughs pretty much stop coming. But Hav Plenty is still an audacious, promising debut.