BEFORE: Finally, my planned back-to-school film chain is here, just a couple of weeks late. I had a bit of an unexpected start with "The Glass Castle" and "Our Souls at Night" a few weeks ago, those weren't part of the plan, but "The Glass Castle" accidentally touched on the issue of home schooling vs. attending public school, and the other film was set in August with a minor young character staying with his grandmother until school started in September.
Regina King carries over from "If Beale Street Could Talk". I just used Pedro Pascal as a link, and he's starring in one new TV series I want to see - "The Mandalorian" - while Regina King is going to appear in the other one, "Watchmen". I just went through Entertainment Weekly's whole Fall TV preview, and I'm prepared to say that even though there are more new TV series than ever, on more platforms than ever (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, AppleTV, Disney Plus) I'm going to focus on these two, because I don't have enough time for any other new shows. Plus, the networks forgot AGAIN to cancel shows like "Shark Tank" and "Law & Order: SVU", so my schedule could be packed.
THE PLOT: People from all different walks of life encounter racial tension, rape, responsibility and the meaning of an education on a university campus.
AFTER: Set on the campus of the fictional "Columbus University", which is conveniently located in AnyState, USA, it seems like this film just wanted to over-simplify every social issue that it could get its hands on, from athletics to frats to hate groups to date rape. By trying to cover everything at once, it couldn't really do a deep dive into any of these topics, and so it doesn't really draw any strong conclusions about the causes of all the tension, or what to do about them. I'm trying to think back to my time in college, which was the late 80's, and I remember that it was a time of great social change, student groups were advocating for gay rights, affirmative action was a thing (before the backlash about it) and women were still fighting for equal rights (how did that one turn out, did they win?). In other words, it was a lot like now, only earlier.
As the film opens, a track athlete has a conversation with his coach, and he wants to cut back his responsibilities to the track team. He soon learns the ramifications of this as his full athletic scholarship is cut back to a half scholarship, and he can't make up the difference. He (and a number of other students) are then kicked out of Political Science class until they can pay their outstanding tuition. OK, it's a hard lesson and it sets up his return to the team, but I'm fairly sure that college doesn't work this way. Admittedly, I'm no expert on athletic scholarships, but when I went to NYU we couldn't even REGISTER for a class until we got an OK from the bursar's office. (I had a partial National Merit scholarship resulting from my PSAT score, but while I appreciated it, honestly, it was a drop in the bucket compared to tuition.). So the athlete might be a special case, but how did so many other students get to sit down in the class if they owed the college money? A well-organized university would never have let that happen - or does the screenwriter just not understand how college works?
The whole issue of college sports is another shallow dive. Malik got a FULL scholarship, why wasn't that enough for him? One character even points out to him midway through the film - "Do you know how many people would kill to be in that position?" Umm, yeah, Mr. Screenwriter, other people would love to be in Malik's position - so why can't he appreciate it? Why does he want to get the scholarship, but not do the running? Because it makes him beholden to the system, because it makes him feel like a "slave"? Really, this is capitalism at work, he wants a college degree, the college wants a winning track team, I'm not seeing the problem here. 99% of college atheletes understand that if they want the degree, plus room and board and training on the college's dime, they've got to put in the effort and show up as needed. Plus the college is probably going to let him skate on his coursework, or take a bunch of easy-A classes. Everyone around him says to get out and run, why can't he get on board?
NITPICK POINT: Even after the big track meet, where I think Malik's relay team lost by two-hundredths of a second or something, I couldn't see the problem. Come on, that's really close, why can't the team be happy with second place? Were they blaming Malik for the loss? I couldn't really tell. Anyway, in a relay race it's probably difficult to tell which member of the team wasn't pulling his weight by .02 seconds' worth.
Then there's the overall racial tension at the university, which, if you'll pardon the pun, gets reduced to a very black-or-white issue. There are clearly Asians and Latinos in the school, each ethnicity gets a couple seconds of screen time, but every character who gets dialogue is either this or that, Caucasian or African-American, so that's a gross over-simplification, right? If you're a black male, you're either a track star or a gang member, and if you're a white male, you're either a frat boy or a skinhead. There simply must be more options for who to be at this school. And across the board, everyone feels more comfortable hanging out with people of their own race, so we're never going to cross the great racial divide this way. The campus police is racist across the board, too, because when they appear on the scene, they just start clubbing the black students, assuming they're the cause of whatever problem is occuring (this happens not once, but TWICE).
When the black students take matters into their own hands (another thing that happens twice) they're always right, but for the wrong reasons. They beat up the fratboy who raped Kristen, but not for that reason - it's because he was rude to a black girl on the phone. Sure, that probably warrants a beating. Later in the film the black students come together again to beat up the skinheads, but you shouldn't really beat up racist white people. I mean, sure, they deserve it, but then you're lowering yourself to their level, as you're doing to them exactly what they wanted to do to black people. A better tactic would be to take the high road and prosecute them for their hate crimes, while staying above the fray. Or ignoring them completely, which would prove that their racism has no merit. But I understand that taking the high road may be more difficult.
The character of Kristen is a lot more complicated, which perhaps makes her the most enigmatic one in the film. She doesn't report her rape - I guess many women don't, but since they don't, maybe we're never sure why - and then by devoting time to socially aware groups on campus, she meets two people she's attracted to, and one is male and one is female. OK, it's a tough nut to crack here, most films shy away from bisexuality just because it's hard to understand, and putting somebody in either THIS category or THAT one is a lot easier. There was a chance here to maybe explore the in-between, how somebody feels and acts when they're truly attracted to both sexes, and what complications might arise from that.
But I think they tanked that here by having a sex scene that showed her having sex with both partners, and not at the same time, but maybe toggling between two separate (or many separate) encounters. This was very confusing to me - was she having sex with one and imagining she was with the other? Were both scenes imaginary, or were both real? Shooting this as a continuous sequence didn't help matters, it only made things more confusing. I guess the consensus here is that she had two separate relationships going at the same time, and the montage cut between different nights, but as for any real meaning behind it all, any indication about where her head was at, or how it feels to juggle two relationships with two people of different gender, I guess there just wasn't enough time? We've got to get back to one of the other storylines we're juggling, after all.
Similarly, I wish we could have gotten more inside the head of the white student who joins the skinheads. It could be a pretty big leap from "I hate my black roommate because he plays loud music" to "I hate all black people and wish to commit racially-charged violence", but you'd never know it from watching this movie. What really goes on the mind of someone before he picks up a gun and shoots into a crowd? (which, by the way, was a crowd that had white people in it, too, so it feels like the screenwriter didn't really understand hate crimes, either.). I guess we'll never know. (NOTE: IMDB says that the shooting scene here was loosely based on the 1966 incident at the University of Texas, which was also depicted in the animated documentary "Tower", which I watched earlier this year.)
There's a bit at the end where Malik and Kristen speak for the first time, after everything that goes down has gone down, and their conversation is basically an acknowledgement that they've never spoken before, which is an odd thing to say to someone that you don't really know. It just seems like a writer is shrugging and admitting he couldn't think of a way to get these characters in the same shot, or anything else for them to talk about. Like the whole film, it's clunky at best in the way it goes about addressing things. Even the film's final message to the audience - the word "unlearn" over an American flag, is clunky. Unlearn what? Racism? Political science? The meaning of the flag?
Also starring Omar Epps (last seen in "Alfie"), Kristy Swanson (last seen in "Pretty in Pink"), Michael Rapaport (last seen in "Chuck"), Ice Cube (last seen in "xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Jennifer Connelly (last seen in "The House of Sand and Fog"), Tyra Banks (last heard in "Eight Crazy Nights"), Jason Wiles (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming"), Cole Hauser (last seen in "Olympus Has Fallen"), Busta Rhymes (last seen in "Shaft"), Laurence Fishburne (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Bradford English (last seen in "Lucky You"), Jay R. Ferguson, Andrew Bryniarski (last seen in "Hudson Hawk"), Trevor St. John (last seen in "Payback"), Talbert Morton, Adam Goldberg (last seen in "Before Sunrise"), Bridgette Wilson-Sampras (last seen in "The Wedding Planner"), Kari Wuhrer (last seen in "Thinner"), Randal Batinkoff (last seen in "For Keeps?"), with cameos from Morris Chestnut (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Vitamin C.
RATING: 4 out of 10 PeaceFest flyers
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