THE GREAT WHITE HYPE
A film review by Ben Hoffman
Copyright 1996 Ben Hoffman
Witty and satiric, The Great White Hope never lets up. The Reverend Fred Sultan (Sanuel L Jackson) is the ultimate con man who is, among other things the manager and boxing promoter of the World's Champion, "James, The Grim Reaper," (Damon Wayans). James is always asking when he is going to see some of the millions that his boxing has earned him but the Reverend has the ready smile, the hug, and "Brother, I love you" as the ready answer to James . . . and to everyone else.
The thread of the story is that James is worried that the number of people attending the boxing matches is dropping and realizes the black public is getting tired of seeing "one black brother beating up another black brother." The solution, suggested by his gorgeous assistant, Bambi (Salli Richardson), is to get a white fighter dumb enough to take on the champ; hence "The Great White Hype." Fortunately, she knows someone, Terry Conklin (Peter Berg) from her past who did once beat James in an amateur boxing match.
Although everyone in the cast has some input into making the film a knockout, Peter Berg steals the movie with his very sincere goals in life but dumb enough to think he can beat the champ.. When they find Terry he is no longer interested in boxing. He plays the guitar in a coffee house and all he is interested in is saving the world's homeless. If the money he wins in the match will go to ending the homeless situation of the world, he will agree to the fight. That is one of the many satiric parts of the film, a boxer interested in the homeless. You will love the scowling, husky, menacing guardians (including the one who does a 10-second dance while on duty) who follow the Reverend. Let us not forget Michael Kane (Jeff Goldblum) who is trying for a Pulitzer prize by exposing the Reverend's "private" life.
In leading supporting roles are John Lovitz, John Rhys-Daniels, Cheech Marin and Corbin Bernsen.
Directed by Reginald Hudlin.
Rating 3.5 Bytes
4 Bytes = Superb 3 Bytes = Too good to miss 2 Bytes = Average 1 Byte = Save your money
Ben Hoffman
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews