Black or White

Writer-director Mike Binder has made some movies that I've liked.  Now he has made Black or White, a movie I didn't care much for.  Oh, it's well intentioned, and the cast is fine.  But the characters are simplistic, and the movie veers a bit too heavily on melodrama.  It never once for a second feels real.  While the actors fill the roles well enough, the words they speak sound like scripted dialogue instead of conversations.

The film's central conflict revolves around Eloise (Jillian Estell), a cute as a button 7-year-old black girl who has been living with her upper class white grandparents her whole life.  We learn her story as the film unfolds.  Her mother (who was only 17 when she was pregnant) died in childbirth, and her father is a lowlife and a drug addict who has never been there for her.  The parents of her mother have since looked after her, and given her a good life, including sending her to a well-regarded prep school.  Her grandfather, Elliot (Kevin Costner), is a successful lawyer with a heavy drinking problem.  His drinking becomes even worse when his wife and Eloise's grandmother is killed in a car accident as the film opens, and he must now raise her on his own.

The early scenes of the movie are focused mainly on the relationship between Elliot and Eloise, and right away, there is a troubling note that something is wrong.  Instead of exploring the relationship between the grandfather and this little girl he must now look after on his own, the screenplay instead is locked entirely in Sitcom Land.  The kid is cute and all, but a bit too quick with the one liners when Elliot can't brush her hair right, or gets lost when he has to drive her to school.  Even the scene where Elliot must tell her that her grandmother is gone rings false, because the dialogue between them sounds so scripted.  Instead of genuine emotion, we get a cute little scene where the characters have a dialogue back and forth that sounds overly rehearsed and not at all genuine.  It feels like they're crying on cue, and giving funny little line readings to make sure the audience doesn't get too sad.

Binder's last film, Reign Over Me, covered the issue of loss much more honestly.  That was an effective drama about a man played by Adam Sandler who had lost his entire family on 9/11, and he had no idea how to move on, so he shut himself away in a private world of video games, movies and fantasy.  In that movie, it felt like the pain and loss of the character was coming from a natural place we could identify with.  Here, the death of Costner's wife is essentially treated as a plot device, which is only brought up when it is dramatically convenient.  It exists simply to bring in Eloise's other grandmother,  Rowena (Octavia Spencer).  She's the mother of Eloise's father, and wants the girl to come and live in her bustling home filled with various family members who look and behave like extras in an urban sitcom.  She knows of Elliot's drinking, and doesn't think he can raise the child on his own.

Fair enough.  But the movie forgets to make Rowena into a real character.  She's sassy, she's smart-mouthed, and she often speaks when she shouldn't, but we never really get to see what kind of a relationship she has with her granddaughter, because the movie forgets to give them a real scene together.  Every time they are on the screen together, they barely interact.  What does Eloise think of Rowena, or her side of the family?  She tells Elliot that she would prefer to live with him, but we never get a sense of their relationship either, because all of their scenes together are more concerned with being cute than creating characters.  The rift between Elliot and Rowena threatens to create a rift in the family, and it eventually heads to court.  This in turn leads to even more overwrought melodrama that is hollow and unconvincing.

Black or White takes a simplified and heavily dramatized look at a situation that should be relatable and heartfelt.  Everything feels like its been designed to make an audience feel good, so it just doesn't seem real.  The conflict isn't strong enough, the drama isn't stirring, the characters are shallow and underwritten, the courtroom scenes are heavy on the intense dramatics, and the climactic moments feel forced.  There's just a very neat and tidy feel to everything that betrays the very concept of the story it is trying to tell.  This should be messy, it should be painful and maybe even brutal.  Instead, it feels like we're watching one of those TV shows where the problems are solved in under a half hour, and everybody hugs it out at the end.  Only, instead of a half hour, this movie is dragged out to a very long two hours.

This is a movie that is not afraid to ask some interesting questions.  Should a biracial girl be exposed to both worlds of her family?  Is a man wrong if he feels someone cannot change?  Black or White is not afraid to ask these questions.  It's just afraid to give the answers in a way that doesn't feel like it's been presented in as safe and non-offensive a manner as possible.

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