Community

Rating: 80%


(http://en.wikipedia.org)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2009 -

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Comedy

Directors:

Outstanding Performances:

Premiss:

Lawyer is suspended when his false claim to have a bachelor’s degree is discovered, so he enrolls at a Community college.

Themes:

Alienation

Atheism

Christianity

Coming-of-age

Compassion

Communism

Courage

Destiny

Emotional repression

Empathy

Ethnicity

Family

Friendship

Identity

Loneliness

Loyalty

Materialism

Narcissism

Nostalgia

Personal change

Political Correctness

Self-expression

Sexism

Sexual Repression

Solipsism

Stereotyping

White culture

White guilt

White supremacy

Similar to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

WHITE COMMUNITY

Summary: Light & superficial - like the culture that spawned it - yet wantonly-amusing.

Humorous sitcom with a lovable cast of stereotypes that, while funny, has nowhere to go - dramatically - because the characters remain stubbornly two-dimensional.

As with Whites in tv land, the characters do not develop (for fear of losing the only White friends they have); making this a very realistic look at Whites - albeit a comedy going around-and-around in ever-decreasing emotional circles.

However, the cast do OK with their limited characters: The racist, homophobe claiming not to realize how offensive he is (don’t they all?); the neurotic Jewish princess refusing to embrace her femininity; the bookish Asian nerd; the big Black momma; etc.

Joel McHALE is particularly fine as the immature and self-hating White know-it-all with an answer to everything - except his fear of treating women as serious and life-changing.

The light-skinned writers do not know how to invest their dark-skinned characters with an inner life, so resort to irony & sarcasm - rather than any substantive humor coming from real-life people in real-life situations. This is partly-disguised & ameliorated by the sheer absurdity of many of the situations the characters manage to get themselves into - as well as the undoubted energy the many performers bring to the show.

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