BLACK OR WHITE Review

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It’s nearly impossible to talk about Black or White without causing some heated debate. Writer/director Mike Binder’s movie is, perhaps, the most earnest and repulsive “get off my lawn”  euphemism  directed at people of color in a very long time. Some will claim that Black or White is well intentioned (as so many did after seeing The Blind Side, The Help and so forth), but intentions could not be any clearer: This is a film that attempts to justify white male privilege as a mild character flaw, something that simply cannot be changed and should be accepted as unavoidable. Its heart could not be further from being in the right place.

Even when one ignores the sociopolitical aspects of Black or White, there are still numerous issues to discuss. In an incredibly awkward staged scene, we meet Elliot Anderson (Kevin Costner), a lawyer whose wife has just died in a car accident. The death of his wife leaves Elliot with the custody of his young granddaughter, Eloise (Jillian Estell). There is, however, one other potential guardian, Rowena “WiWi” Jeffers (Octavia Spencer), Eloise’s other grandmother.

Rowena angrily insists that Eloise needs the guidance of a woman and the motherly nurturing she provides. However, Elliot holds great disdain for Rowena and her family. His hatred for Rowena’s son and Eloise’s father, Reggie (André Holland), on whom he blames his daughter’s childbirth-related death, is evidently so blinding that he dislikes his whole side of the family. What follows is a brutal legal battle, full of rousing speeches, and Rowena attempting to stare down a judge several times. These supposedly inspiring and moving moments fail miserably.

One of the biggest issues with Black or White is its attempts to leaven some of the darker moments with humor. This mixture comes across as unintentionally jumbled. When Elliot searches for his liquor after his maid, Rosita, attempts to hide it (instead of simply ridding the house of liquor entirely), it’s unclear if one should be laughing at his frantic scrambling or genuinely uncomfortable seeing an addict search for his fix. This major tonal imbalance robs the film of any power.

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Binder also relies too heavily on unexplained contrivances, such as the reappearance of Reggie just in time for the court case and related events that would never be accepted in a court of law. There’s also the simultaneous relapses of two of the main characters suffering from different addictions, which the film constantly marginalizes or treats as an issue to be quickly fixed, rather than a very serious disease. This leads to a hilariously misjudged and violent confrontation sequence, which ends with yet another ridiculously contrived rescue (complete with heavenly visions of dead people).

Still, Black or White would not be so nauseating if it were not for its misrepresentation of women and black culture. The script uses broad stereotypes at an alarming rate, such as WiWi being merely defined by her sassiness and maternal instincts, despite being an enormously successful self-made businesswoman. Even worse than that are the attempts to justify Elliot’s racial slurs (and his blatant racism, which the script continually insists does not exist) by surrounding him with other people of color: Eloise’s tutor, Rosita and a few other entirely irrelevant characters. Binder’s logic seems to be that if Elliot interacts with people of color and gives them jobs, he can’t possibly be racist.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the film is its treatment of Reggie, whose lack of education is actually treated as a character flaw in a horrifying courtroom sequence in which he is forced to spell his daughter’s name, despite barely knowing the girl.

If the intentions of Black or White’s creative team was to make a race relations drama with Fox News’ viewers as its primary target. When one character sums up another character as “a walking stereotype” and claims he embodies everything white people see in black men, it’s hard to disagree after sitting through two agonizing hours of rose-tinted, passive-aggressive generalizing that constantly panders to its audience and ends with the great victory of a grumpy old white man over the “weird’ black family that he simply can’t understand.