BLACK AND WHITE (Screen Gems) Starring: Power, Ben Stiller, Brooke Shields, Robert Downey Jr., Claudia Schiffer, Raekwon, Allan Houston, Bijou Phillips, Elijah Wood, William Lee Scott, Mike Tyson, Joe Pantoliano, Gaby Hoffman, Jared Leto. Screenplay: James Toback. Producers: Michael Mailer, Daniel Bigel and Ron Rotholz. Director: James Toback. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, sexual situations, nudity, drug use, violence, adult themes) Running Time: 100 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
The title of James Toback's BLACK AND WHITE carries several meanings. It refers partly to the growing influence of hip-hop culture on the dress, speech and attitudes of suburban white youth. It also refers to the dichotomies present in most of the main characters -- between what they have been and what they want to be, between what others expect of them and what they expect of themselves. And, sadly, it also refers to writer/director Toback's presentation of his story. There's nary a scrap of subtext to be found in his painfully shallow piece of exploration into a complex cultural phenomenon.
BLACK AND WHITE winds its way through the intertwined stories of several New Yorkers over the space of a few days. Rich Bower (Power), a Harlem crime boss, is trying to diversify into legitimate business, working to break into rap music along with his buddy Cigar (Raekwon). Another buddy, college basketball star Dean Carter (New York Knick guard Allan Houston), faces a moral choice when he's approached by Mark Clear (Ben Stiller) to shave points on a game. Another of Rich's running buddies is white kid Will (William Lee Scott), the black-sheep son of a New York district attorney (Joe Pantoliano). Tied into their world are a group of high school students fascinated with black culture, who become the subjects of a documentary film by husband-and-wife film-makers Sam (Brooke Shields) and Terry Donager (Robert Downey Jr.).
There are plenty of characters for Toback to keep track of in BLACK AND WHITE, but apparently that's not a matter of great concern to him. And it's not surprising, since he hasn't got the slightest interest in developing any of those characters. Toback throws out plenty of scenes in which we are supposed to understand what a problem it is when people pretend to be something they're not. The actual people, however, are absurdly static; there may be one moment in the entire film when we glimpse an emotion that's recognizably human. The stunt casting certainly doesn't help, as Houston, Power and Raekwon do little more than recite lines competently (Mike Tyson does do a surprisingly effective job of playing himself, unconcerned about allaying fears that he's a psycho). With the notable exception of Stiller -- who brings some pitiable self-absorption to his role -- the entire cast of BLACK AND WHITE is used by Toback as meat puppets to deliver his thoughts on race relations and sexual politics.
He might as well have rented a billboard. As cinematic anthropology lessons go, BLACK AND WHITE is about as clumsy and uninvolving as you could imagine. When Toback wants to explore why white kids are interested in hip-hop, he has a teacher (Jared Leto) or Shields' film-maker ask them to explain, turning the teens into talking heads. When he wants to touch on the complexities of interracial dating, he has two characters start chatting about it. When he wants to show that a white recording studio manager becomes more comfortable renting to black rappers when a white lawyer is representing them, he has the black rappers comment significantly on the development. Every theme is laid out in expository dialogue, crushing the attempt to give the film an improvised urgency. In the first 15 minutes, Toback has told you absolutely everything he has to say.
If you suspect that might turn the remaining 85 minutes into a pretentious bore, you're right. Most of BLACK AND WHITE consists of episodes with no sense of consequence: Will Will and his father reconcile? Will Bower get nailed by the police detective who's tracking him? Will Sam and Terry's marriage of convenience last? Will teen lovebirds Wren (Elijah Wood) and Charlie (Bijou Phillips) stick together through Charlie's fascination with Bower? Who cares? Toback certainly doesn't, or he would have devoted as much energy to giving his characters personalities as he does to giving them speeches and a crossover-ready soundtrack for their lives. By the time BLACK AND WHITE's "Six Months Later" coda rolls around -- so abruptly you may be left disoriented by the shift -- you wonder why Toback bothers to tie up loose ends at all. His notion of keeping it real means keeping it tedious and pedantic. Everything he has to say is up there on the screen in black and white, often underlined just for good measure.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 annoyz n the hood: 3.
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