TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

realitymatrix001 So, in an alternate universe, where all white men are gay, weak and flimsy, we have "black and white". And this title is descriptive of its portrayals.Total extremist garbage that manages to be racist on multiple levels, depicting white males as weak, sniveling sycophants and black men as powerful, desirable specimens that all white women want to do the deed with because their white husbands are just nowhere near as amazing as the black men. Premeditated filth intended to soothe racial relations but managing to twist them out of proportion. Of note is the fact that the only 'manl'y white guys depicted here are the ones who try to "act black". Incredibly ridiculous and not worth your time.

Lars Ericson Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic in all of his 60 or so seconds in this film. I think he is one of the best comic actors of all time.Brooke Shields also does a spot-on amateur documentary film-maker shtick. I didn't even recognize her in her dreadlocks in the first half of the film. She and Downey trail a bunch of rich white high school kids half their age, trying to be one of them as they go slumming. Shields best moment is when she meets a recently married old friend on the Staten Island ferry, and you feel the disparity between Shield's refusing-to-grow-up character and her ordinary, grown-up old friend.Downey's best moments are when he tries to pick up Mike Tyson and when he tries to pick up one of the high school students, reprising his character in Wonder Boys. It's too bad Hollywood has an insurance clause against him now, because everything he does is exceedingly knowing.The flattest moments are the James Tolback Obligatory Sex In Central Park scene, apparently a rehearsal for an identical one in this year's "When will I be loved?", and in the contrived Typical Banker's Family Dinner with the Sullenly Rebellious Daughter While The Manservant Ladles the Soup. Please. We know Tolback has a lot of celebrity friends; they're all in his movies. I doubt he has met a single real banker in his life.Also we are treated to the same flaw which is in Black and White, namely the highly implausible plot devices that tie all of the characters together, wherever they live in the movie and whatever their social strata. He is a big buyer of the Deus Ex Machina.He's also a big buyer of improvisation. In the DVD he says almost all the films are improvised except the one where Claudia Schiffer impersonates what one critic called "the world's most unlikely graduate student", and another called "a surprisingly believable turn as a faithless brainiac". Whatever. She looks hot for the most part except towards the end where they're one outdoor shot in a riverside park where her lips just look too big and she looks like a squeaky and insufficiently made-up skinny yin-yang. What can you do. Her funniest moment was the split second sitting next to and conversing with Robert Downey Jr. when he turns to compare perfume notes with the young man sitting next to him, and she figures out she's no longer the center of attention and suddenly gets up and walks away. Her least likely moment is when she is about to have sex in a bathroom with her boyfriend's best friend. Not that the premise is unlikely: She is just too Teutonic and awkward beneath all that prettiness to look like she's about to tongue-wrestle with a big sweaty gangster. (Much more believable is the news story about her I read the other day where she is applying to private schools for her unborn child.)Tolback cast himself as Tolback pretty much, as usual. If you're the director, why not throw yourself a cameo? It's just a stone's throw from there to writing in a sex scene with the lead actress, but if he did that he'd have to write himself a lead part and then he'd be Vincent Gallo, but he's not, he's more of a voyeur; enough to write those Central Park scenes and shoot them in closeup with full improvisatory rein given to the actors. Let them really get into the moment, keep the cameras rolling.Am I boring you with this review? Is it running on a little long? Does it seem a little disconnected?If you think this is bad, go see the movie.

bob the moo A group of white kids become the focus of a pair of documentary film makers looking at the phenomenon of the `wigger' - white kids adopting the mannerisms and culture of the black, hip-hop community. Meanwhile gangsters-come-rappers Rich Bower and Cigar have to face up to the opening of a white club in their neighbourhood. Also college basketball player Dean is set up for throwing a game and forced to provide evidence to the cops on Bower.If my plot summary sounds like it's confused or unclear, there's a good reason for that; it's because the film itself is very much spinning all over the place with a whole lot of strands. It is apparent that the film is trying to make a bigger point about culture, identity and race relations in the US but the frustrating thing is that it just doesn't manage to do it. It has plenty of interest moments and plenty of interesting characters that say a lot, but it never manages to come together in anything that is either thought provoking or satisfying.I had hoped that the film would pull all it's threads together to deliver a point but it didn't. The stories themselves are quite interesting on the whole, but it is evident that this is not what the film was after. Hence we don't get a conclusion, we get an unclear `6 months later' finale that even just plays over the end credits - that's how little the stories actually meant. OK, so that leaves us with the commentary concept of this film - that it's not just about the actions, it's about the wider issues. If that is the case, the film still flounders a bit because it was not clear to me what point it was trying to make beyond the `white kids like black culture', `black people don't like white people stealing their culture' etc etc stuff that shouldn't have taken 100 minutes to make!Despite these comments, I did enjoy watching the film. The semi-improvised nature of the film makes for an enjoyable experience and for scenes with flowing, quite natural dialogue. The downside of that is that many of the cast mistake mumbling in ebonics for interesting dialogue. The cast is still impressive despite the fact that many of them have nothing really to do. The main players don't impress that much - Downey and Shields are pretty poor, mainly because their characters are pointless. The various white kids just slum it in wigger roles that would be funny if they weren't so accurate. The cameos and roles for rappers are actually quite good - but most of them are just playing the gangster roles that they play everyday in their music. Raekwon and Power from Wu Tang were both pretty good but he film benefits mostly from the sheer number of faces rather than the quality. Houston, Tyson, Pantoliano, Stiller, Method Man, Ratner and various other rappers all add interest.Overall this film is entertaining in it's freewheeling manner but it is hard to ignore the fact that it doesn't achieve anything. The stories don't really go anywhere and the points about race and cultural identity get muddled and lost in the mix. It has potential and it is definitely interesting, but it is badly flawed.

maros612 I bought this title because I felt familiar with its name and I saw a trailer on some other dvd (baby boy if i remember well). Truly, I expected more of this - like some kind of a celebration of diversity, coexistence, relationships, partnership and romance. But this wasn't really present there, not in a straight, healthy way. It looked to me like it's more celebration of an unjustice and even sickness in some moments. I didn't like how an evil survived everything. What's the message of this? Well enough of complaing, this movie was still good to the point, but I really mean it when I'm saying I expected more from this.