Rather than fire anyone, Quincy quits. He's depressed, anyway; his fiancee Helen Sharp (Bianca Lawson) has just broken up with him. He starts writing versions of a wounded, angry letter to her and somehow the correspondence grows into a book titled Break Up Handbook, about how to break up with a girl before she can break up with you (danger signal: She says she "wants to have a talk").
Enter Quincy's cousin Evan (Morris Chestnut), a moving target who prides himself on breaking up with girls as a pre-emptive strategy. His girl Nicky (Gabrielle Union) says she wants to have a talk, and to deny her the opportunity of breaking up with him, Evan sends Quincy to a bar to meet her and tell her the relationship is over. Alas, Nicky has cut her hair and doesn't fit Evan's description; Quincy starts talking with her, and soon they're flirting with love. If the hair trick sounds contrived, recall that Shakespeare was not above mistaken identities even more absurd. Not that I hold it against him.
Gabrielle Union is one of those actresses whose smile is so warm, you hope the other characters will say something just to make her happy. As a counterbalance, the movie supplies Rita (Jennifer Esposito), a mercenary man-trap who wants to get her hooks into Philip the editor. Quincy is called in as a consultant on this case, too, but Rita is too crafty to be easily fooled by tricks learned from a book.
There will of course be a scene of wounded betrayal, when Evan discovers that Quincy is dating Nicky and decides he loves her after all. And a titanic battle of the wills between Rita and Philip. And jokes about being the author of a best seller; Quincy's book seems to hit the charts within days after he finishes it, having apparently been printed by magic.
"Breakin' All the Rules" is not a comic masterpiece, but it's entertaining and efficient, and provides a showcase for its stars. It's on the level of a good sitcom.
It's unusual in this way: Writer-director Daniel Taplitz has come up with a magazine title that would probably work on the newsstands, and a book idea that would probably sell.
Most magazines in movies are completely implausible (in "13 Going on 30," the heroine redesigned the magazine as a school yearbook). And most best sellers in the movies sound way too good to ever sell many copies.
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