Black and White

Watching Robert Downey Jr. try to seduce Mike Tyson is worth the ticket price alone, but only just. The appropriation of black hip-hop culture by privileged white teenagers should prove interesting ground for storytelling, but James Toback's film is undermined by the lack of even one likeable character. It's very hard to care about the motivations or destinies of people you hate. Two pleasant surprises amongst the vignettes: Ben Stiller can be convincing outside of trash comedy; and Claudia Schiffer can actually act.

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.

I just don't understand how some people can comment on this film saying that it had little structure yet can comment about Independance Day being good!!!! This film is realistic and quite humerous. It doesn't depict Blacks as wanting a quick lay and it doesn't potray White as trying to be bling!!

It just depicts the characters we see do what they want to do... And besides, if you hated the film so much, you should have turned it off. The fact the very vast majority did not suggests you are not at all being honest in your opinions of this film.

Get a life people and carry on watching your Hollywood Superflicks!!

My verdict: 7/10

I wish the the summary line I wrote was a joke, but unfortunately, it isn't. This film catered to every tired-out racial cliche known, and the dialogue was stilted and wooden. Every character was completely unbelievable. Nauseating. That anyone reviewed this film positively is a sign at just how far we have to go on matters of race...most people would rather lie to look PC than tell the truth and actually embrace people based on their own merit instead of having outmoded racial stereotypes.

By the way, it's "bass", not "base", Mr. Canadian Reviewer.

I always find the idea of improvised (or semi-improvised) film making an interesting one, even if the results themselves are disappointing, and very rarely work (exceptions being some of the movies of Christopher Guest and Abel Ferrara). It's a risky idea because it's a true test of an actors talent. Some succeed and some fall flat on their faces. 'Black and White' is a perfect example of this, for every interesting moment involving say Ben Stiller, or yes, Mike Tyson, there's way too many dull and rambling scenes that go nowhere (come on down Brooke Shields and Bijou Phillips). What makes this movie even more frustrating is James Toback is obviously aiming for a BIG STATEMENT regarding race relations in contemporary America, yet the movie is so superficial and confused it ultimately says nothing much. Toback is a maddingly uneven film maker, but he is responsible for one of my all time favourite movies, the sadly underrated 'Fingers', so I usually give him the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately 'Black and White' is a missed opportunity and has very little to recommend it. I suppose Toback deserves some credit for at least attempting to do something other than mainstream Hollywood dreck, but ultimately a crappy movie is still a crappy movie, no matter how good the intentions.