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Black and White, 1999, 98 minutes, Rated R
By Steven Fullwood
Black and White is a film that no one should see without a sense of
self-awareness and humor because that way you won't feel completely bad that you plopped
down cash to see it. Director James Tolback's film deals specifically with young blacks
and whites from divergent background (middle to upper class whites and hip-hop culture)
and explores relationships borne out of curiosity and stereotypes. The story revolves
around two friends, an aspiring rapper's manager named Rick (Wu-Tang Clan's Power) and a
basketball player (Allan Houston.) Both date white women and end up turning on one another
in the end. |
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But don't let me mislead you. Black and
White is neither a "bad" film, nor a "good" film. What it does is lay
bare our national consciousness when it comes to the state of race relations. The film's
action is filtered through the eyes of young whites and blacks and numerous taboos are
explored, such as the black man/white woman issue. The film's opening scene shows Rick
sexing up two white girls in New York's Central Park, while his partner, and three young
black boys look on. Nudity, public sex, interracial sex, voyeurism, and pornography flood
your consciousness, demanding your attention in a way that doesn't allow you to sit pretty
in the dark theatre. You become a voyeur, and thus are trapped. I found myself scrunched
down in my seat most of the time, saddled with a queasiness in my stomach.
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Toback fills Black and White to the rim with just about
every racial and sexual taboo imaginable (black men's genitalia, "wiggers," gay,
bisexuality, among others) in an attempt to "keep it real." This is further
evidenced in the idea that the cast comprised of raps stars (Power, Raekwon, Method Man),
athletes (Allan Houston and Mike Tyson), a model (Claudia Schiffer) and professional
actors (Ben Stiller, Brooke Shields, Robert Downey, among others) were given the
opportunity to come up with original, non-scripted dialogue. No doubt such a technique can
work, but failure was imminent because most of these folks aren't actors. For example when
Method Man shows up for his two minutes onscreen, the audience is treated to a boring
sermon on the influence of Hip-Hop. The result is that most of the dialogue sounds forced,
the non-actors being particularly stiff and noticeably self-conscious.
Despite this, Black and White delivers
two good performances by Ben Stiller (Something About Mary) and Robert Downey, Jr. (The
Pick-Up Artist). Stiller's twisted, jealous cop is excellent and Downey's predatory
homosexual named Terry is quite convincing. In one poignant scene, after Terry makes a
pass at beefy Tyson (a bad idea, right?), he gets royally trounced - a gay man's nightmare
realized.
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© Screen Gems |
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Black and White is a fairly accurate, yet an uneven and often shapeless story about race
relations (or rather human relations) in the United States. It ambles along, as we do,
working through, and sometimes capitalizing, on stereotypical ideas about the
"other" in order to sate our sexual and moralistic appetites.
M
May 2000
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