Entertainment

Latifah scores with ‘Just Wright’

Queen Latifah, who has graced movies of widely divergent quality — everything from “Chicago” to the mercifully forgotten “Taxi” — gets her best vehicle in years with “Just Wright,” a very rare contemporary romantic comedy that doesn’t succumb to terminal stupidity.

She’s perfectly cast as Leslie Wright, a physical therapist and basketball fan in New Jersey. Her fantasies come true when she goes to work on Nets basketball star Scott

McKnight, played with great charm and sensitivity by the hip-hop performer Common.

They meet cute when the earthy Leslie stops to gas up her late grandfather’s battered old Mustang and she ends up helping the baffled Scott fuel up his new SUV.

Invited to his birthday party, Leslie watches with resignation as Scott succumbs to the charms of her gorgeous best friend Morgan (Paula Patton), who is willing to engage in any games necessary to become an NBA player’s wife.

Morgan is barely ensconced in Scott’s townhouse as his fiancée when he suffers a possibly career-ending knee injury in a game.

Jealous of the lovely physical therapist provided by the Nets, Morgan sends for her more down-to-earth friend Leslie, who takes a leave of absence from her job at a hospital on Roosevelt Island.

Unlike most characters in romantic comedies, Leslie takes her job very seriously, and Scott slowly begins appreciating her warm presence even as her pal grows bored with a fiancé she fears may have become a “has-been.”

The script by Michael Elliot (“Brown Sugar”) may not be full of surprises, but it does portray its characters as mature adults who behave plausibly — including Morgan, who isn’t portrayed as the usual clichéd gold digger.

He’s also provided well-written roles for Phylicia Rashad and Pam Grier as Scott and Leslie’s respective mothers, as well as allowing for cameos by a number of NBA all-stars.

Director Sanna Hamri (“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2”) gets a nicely modulated performance out of Queen Latifah and lets Common show he has a range that extends beyond action roles like his bad-cop act in “Date Night.”

“Just Wright” is a small island of sanity amid summer blockbusters.

lou.lumenick@nypost.com