- Also Known As:
- Unknown
- Year:
- 1993
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Comedy
- Director:
- Outstanding Performances:
- Premiss:
- Affluent couple have their lives touched and intruded-upon by a mysterious young Black man.
- Themes:
- Alienation
Coming-of-age - Compassion
- Destiny
- Emotional repression
- Empathy
- Family
- Identity
- Loneliness
- Love
- Loyalty
- Materialism
- Narcissism
- Nostalgia
- Personal
- Personal change
- Political
- Political Correctness
- Republicanism
- Sexual Repression
- Social class
- Snobbery
- Solipsism
- Stereotyping
- White culture
- White guilt
- White supremacy
- Similar to:
- Unknown
- Review Format:
- DVD
Whiteness Studies
Clever satire on White vanity, narcissism, materialism, emotional repression, social snobbery, White supremacy, superficiality, loneliness,
Without the ability to integrate experience into a structure of rational values, life becomes nothing more than a collection of dinner-party anecdotes - without meaning - that must be forced to fit a ready-made structure proffered by others. Either that, or face the fact that such a structure makes no sense - as such - or has no particular value for one’s own well-being.
One would have to be completely schizophrenic to be unable to judge character by behavior rather than by birth-circumstances and, indeed, the Caucasians here are just that. Even to the extent of pretending that friends-of-friends can be friends out of sheer, wanton xenophobia.
Will SMITH gives a charismatic performance as the classic, charming con man who recognizes the gullibility of those who believe their own delusions by playing-up to those delusions to fill the void in his own life with the status symbol-filled void in theirs.
The other performers are all excellent in their innate understanding of the humor of a Black male exposing the emptiness of White lives by his very presence. Whites’ lack and fear of experience (caused by their belief that they live in Olympian detachment from the rest of Mankind: Their alleged genetic inferiors) makes them easy targets for more worldly-wise fraudsters - despite the ever-present implications, here laid bare, of inherent White sophistication.
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