Cara Gente Branca

I am glad that this film addresses the important issue of racism on college campuses, and I have no disagreement with its political or social justice messages. Any sincere attempt by a filmmaker to make these experiences visible to the broader public is a good thing.

As a white educator who actually attended and later taught at top- tier colleges, I had been looking forward to experiencing a new sharp creative critique of American racism on college campuses as promised by the film's trailer.

This film utterly failed in its attempts to entertain or provoke. It did not provide me even with the typical pleasures of cinema, let alone fresh insight into its subject. It was little more than a leaden slow-moving soap opera with a contrived plot, oddly dressed characters and unconvincing dialogue. In my experience of elite campuses, it is the rare Ivy student (of any race) who routinely dresses like a junior business executive and uses this sort of pretentious speech pattern. Watching this film was like watching a Western in which all the characters had British accents and wore kimonos.

For readers who seek moving and insightful films on racism, I highly recommend Spike Lee "joints" which provide viewers with superior entertainment, dialogue, characters, plot, provocation and insight.

I saw this movie after watching the first, brilliant season of the TV series it spawned, and that makes it difficult to review. Because the TV series is so brilliant, so funny, so nuanced, and so well structured, I can't help but see the movie as a dress rehearsal for what was to come. Would I have enjoyed this movie more had I seen it first? Very possibly.

The movie follows a whole bunch of characters as they deal with issues around race, with black characters ranging from revolutionaries to blend-inners and white characters ranging from supportive to racist to really, really racist.

The movie is hugely ambitious, and director Justin Simien wants to squeeze in every idea he's ever had about race into this movie. Unfortunately, the result often feels overstuffed, with too many characters and too many ideas packed into too little space.

Clearly, Simien needed a TV series. In that, he takes the same ideas and is able to fully explore each one and each character, in wonderful detail.

The movie is certainly well worth seeing, but unlike the TV series, I wouldn't call this essential viewing.

The first 20min was OK... I thought it was going to be funny. Then it gets laughably silly, campy and pretentious. The actors are caricatures of real people. At first you think in the next scene you'll suddenly find more depth and things will come into focus, but no... In the end it's got this sad "Stick to your own people, stop trying to pretend to be white/black if you're not" message which really makes me feel sad for whomever wrote this. What a dark little world they live in. The bits about colleges throwing black-face parties all the time are even a bit ridiculous. The movies based in some fictional ivy league school, but the examples they give are all of tiny colleges no-ones ever heard of. I'm not saying there isn't a race problem in this country, there is for sure. But what this movie is portraying is wildly exaggerated. This is the kind of movie the real racists watch and say "That doesn't happen! It's all made up!" and they're right.

Actually, I don't understand this film, I mean the story, what it intended to tell us. Maybe it's for Americans only. I thought it could be some underrated cool comedy, but what I just saw was definitely not expected. I kind of felt it was a student politics and if it stayed like that way I would have had no problem. But they said it is a comedy and I did not get any, in between it became a racism thing. I never understood this American racism, why they're making it so complicated. Especially the condition of the US is not looking good right now and this film pours a more oil to it. I'm neither white nor black or an American, and sorry I did not find it a good film. Even more, I don't get, how a television series is getting ready to follow-up it. So no offense for those who liked it, seems I'm in a wrong place. I just rated and reviewed what I felt it deserves, other than that I'm not against the film. I'm out of here!

3/10