It took me 24 hours after viewing to process why I didn't like this film. First the positives: the actors, Kevin Costner and Andre Holland who plays Grandma Wewe's son Reggie deliver stellar performances. Octavia Spencer did the best she could with what she had to work with. Also, kudos for trying to make the black family a likable and respectable one.
The negative: All the supporting cast outside of Costner's Elliot are one dimensional. At first glance one would think the film goes out of its way to avoid black stereotypes to the point that this family borders on unbelievable. For example, Grandma has 6 successful businesses and real estate holdings, yet she lives in a questionable neighborhood across the street from a crack house. She's raising several other grands, nephews and nieces which implies that there was something seriously wrong with the adult members of her family. (Where are they, in prison?) And that family jam session! What kind of black family is this? By trying too hard to paint a picture of a loving, extended family, the movie successfully masks old familiar stereotypes: Hard working no-nonsense matriarch, absent man, effed-up male spawn; but hey, they gotta lotta love, musical ability and good times to give even if they can't provide the safety, comfort, and stability that a child needs to be successful. And oh yeah, maids are now Hispanic.
If I were white, this movie would reinforce for me the common misconceptions whites have about black people:
1) They make everything about race even when it's clearly not, which they are more concerned with than the plight of their own communities and their own families' failings. 2) They have nothing but excuses for lack of achievement: compare 30 year old high-school-dropout-can't-spell-his-own-daughter's-name native son Reggie, to 19 year old entrepreneurial-polyglot-pianist-immigrant Duvan. 3) No amount of money that you give them will fix the problems they themselves create. 4) White fathers still need to protect their vulnerable daughters from potential permanent ruin from the lowest elements of black America--political correctness about race be dammed.
Had the two families been on equal economic, educational, and social footing, there might actually be a story worth telling, one that at the very least could create a meaningful conversation about race or perhaps transcend it. However, this movie isn't a conversation about race but a soliloquy, eerily reminiscent of the one begun 100 years ago in the premiere of The Birth of a Nation.
The negative: All the supporting cast outside of Costner's Elliot are one dimensional. At first glance one would think the film goes out of its way to avoid black stereotypes to the point that this family borders on unbelievable. For example, Grandma has 6 successful businesses and real estate holdings, yet she lives in a questionable neighborhood across the street from a crack house. She's raising several other grands, nephews and nieces which implies that there was something seriously wrong with the adult members of her family. (Where are they, in prison?) And that family jam session! What kind of black family is this? By trying too hard to paint a picture of a loving, extended family, the movie successfully masks old familiar stereotypes: Hard working no-nonsense matriarch, absent man, effed-up male spawn; but hey, they gotta lotta love, musical ability and good times to give even if they can't provide the safety, comfort, and stability that a child needs to be successful. And oh yeah, maids are now Hispanic.
If I were white, this movie would reinforce for me the common misconceptions whites have about black people:
1) They make everything about race even when it's clearly not, which they are more concerned with than the plight of their own communities and their own families' failings. 2) They have nothing but excuses for lack of achievement: compare 30 year old high-school-dropout-can't-spell-his-own-daughter's-name native son Reggie, to 19 year old entrepreneurial-polyglot-pianist-immigrant Duvan. 3) No amount of money that you give them will fix the problems they themselves create. 4) White fathers still need to protect their vulnerable daughters from potential permanent ruin from the lowest elements of black America--political correctness about race be dammed.
Had the two families been on equal economic, educational, and social footing, there might actually be a story worth telling, one that at the very least could create a meaningful conversation about race or perhaps transcend it. However, this movie isn't a conversation about race but a soliloquy, eerily reminiscent of the one begun 100 years ago in the premiere of The Birth of a Nation.