LAWRENCE WALKS `LINE' WELL.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Staff Writer

There's a thin line between sheer entertainment and filmmaking with a message, and comic Martin Lawrence would hate to admit to the latter. Still, he walks that line quite effectively in this loose, raunchy, comedy-thriller about a Crenshaw District Casanova who learns that when you play, you pay.

Lawrence plays Darnell, a snappy dresser with a gift for gab who has a honey here, a honey there, and no trouble anywhere, until he meets Brandi (Lynn Whitfield), a limo-driving Harvard MBA real-estate exec who's clearly out of his league.

The ambitious Darnell has just got to have her, or to put it in his own callow parlance, he's got to ``hit that,'' so he can prove to his friend Tee (Bobby Brown), his partner-to-be in a nightclub called Chocolate City, that he's ``the man.''

Darnell, whose ego has the kind of advanced protective coating it took NASA rocket scientists years to develop for the space shuttle, campaigns his way past Brandi's considerable defenses and into her seaside Malibu mansion. Stone-deaf to her careful explanation that she's been badly hurt before, he resorts to the ``L'' word to get her into bed.Next day, he's back on his rounds, distracted - this time seriously - by the arrival back home of an ex-girlfriend, Mia (Regina King), for whom he has real feelings.

Brandi freaks out, and the movie moves from comedy to thriller as she sets about wrecking his possessions and disrupting his life.

Lawrence responds with comic outrage to each fresh assault, and his charisma as a performer, plus some smart supporting turns by Della Reese as his mother and Roger E. Mosley as an older, married father figure, give the story an emotional center that holds it together.

True, Darnell deserves a dog collar and choke chain, but he does get his butt kicked all over town by the formidable Brandi, giving various factions something to root for in a movie that is mainly out to please a wide audience.

Along the way, he finds real love and figures out the difference between being ``the man'' and being a man. On one level, the movie offers audiences a flip side to ``Waiting to Exhale,'' this time depicting an on-the-move young African-American man who reaches some maturity in terms of his behavior toward women.

Lawrence, who co-wrote the script and makes his directing debut, resorts to a patchwork of borrowed ideas from movies such as ``Fatal Attraction,'' ``Basic Instinct'' and ``Sunset Boulevard,'' but the movie's core idea clearly comes from his heart, and he puts it across right on time. The movie is handsomely produced by George Jackson and Doug McHenry, with a seductive r&b soundtrack, including the title song performed by H-Town, and the hit ``Beware of My Crew'' by L.B.C. Crew.