Pride

If I had grown up in the Philly ghetto, Pride, the film now out on DVD starring Terrence Howard and Bernie Mac, would have taken me way back. Instead it turned out to be one of those movies that make for a very palatable pseudo-experience appropriate for black middle class parents to watch with their tweens when they want to talk about 'back in the day', rated PG.

This movie reminds me so much of Roll Bounce that I don't know where to begin. So I won't and I'll end it right there.

Yes it's a good movie. Yes it's a predictable movie. Yes it has it's moment. But the formula is worn so thin that I'm not even sure that I should criticize it. What should I expect? Remember the Titans? Quite frankly, I hope every one of the sports integration / coming of age / ghetto vs suburb / based on a true story movie gets made. We got it for football with Titans. We got it for basketball in Glory Road. Every one of these has their twist. So once they're all done and all the Motown royalties are paid for the slow motion montages, we can sit down and truly ask ourselves what we have learned.

The twist and angle of Pride, which pretty much resides on a very direct plot with no interesting subplots whatsoever, is that sometimes it just doesn't work out at all. And that's just fine. 'It' being the ebony and ivory syrupy goodness. That's unusual for upbeat heartwarming stories. But that's what Pride gives us, a movie where the white guys are for the most part, bad guys.

In fact, I did deal with arrogant white preppies in 1974 on the swim team. They were my teammates. They got that vibe basically right, for what it's worth, but this is a pat zero-sum flick that works just with the basics, not the subtleties of interracial conflict and alliance.

Good film, but.