Soul Man (1986) New World/Comedy RT: 104 minutes Rated PG-13 (language including racial slurs, some sexual material, brief scenes of violence, drug use) Director: Steve Miner Screenplay: Carol Black Music: Tom Scott Cinematography: Jeff Jur Release date: October 24, 1986 (US) Cast: C. Thomas Howell, Rae Dawn Chong, Arye Gross, Melora Hardin, James B. Sikking, Leslie Nielsen, James Earl Jones, Marie Cheatham, Ann Walker, Max Wright, Jeff Altman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mark Neely, Wally Ward, Eric Schiff, Ron Reagan, David Reynolds, Jonathan “Fudge” Leonard, Felix Nelson, Betty Cole, Wolfe Perry, Jerry Pavlon, Laurel Green, John David Bland, Bo Mancuso. Box Office: $27.8M (US)
Rating: **
I’d like to open my review of the “comedy” Soul Man by directly addressing the elephant in the room- i.e. the controversy surrounding its premise. It’s about a rich white kid who poses as a young black man in order to receive a full scholarship to Harvard Law. Take that in for a minute. A Caucasian pretending to be African-American, it just sounds wrong. How is that even done? In the 20s or 30s, it would star a white actor in blackface. In the 80s, it still stars a white actor in blackface only less exaggerated and with an explanation. Either way, it sure pissed off a lot of people at the time, especially African-Americans who called Soul Man “racist” and “offensive”. I’d like to know how many of them actually saw the movie.
The truth is that Soul Man isn’t as offensive its reputation suggests. While some of you may be relieved to hear this, I say it’s part of a larger problem. Simply put, it doesn’t have the courage to “go there” in regards to theme. Every time it starts to make a relevant point about race or bigotry, it backs off before it barely scratches the surface. It touches on a few ideas without actually exploring them. It gives us slapstick and farce instead. Therein lies the movie’s other big problem. It isn’t funny. It wants to be. It should be. The premise is filled with potential. There’s plenty of room for pointed satire. That doesn’t happen because Steve Miner (House) plays it too safe. He sidesteps issues he should approach head-on. I guess he doesn’t want to offend or enlighten. If Mel Brooks thought that way, we wouldn’t have Blazing Saddles. He went there.
Recent UCLA grad Mark Watson (Howell, The Outsiders) is ecstatic about being accepted to Harvard Law with his best bud Gordon (Gross, Just One of the Guys). That is, until his father (Sikking, Hill Street Blues) informs him that he drained his college fund and spent it on himself on the advice of his kid-hating therapist (Wright, ALF). When all else fails, Mark applies for a scholarship intended for black students. How does he pull it off? He exceeds the recommended dosage of experimental tanning pills given to him by a friend. He gets his hair curled into an Afro and VOILA! He’s black and off to Harvard.
This is where Soul Man starts to go wrong. For one thing, Miner misses a golden opportunity to address how black people are perceived by clueless white people. This could have been achieved with a scene of Mark learning to be black by watching reruns of Good Times or What’s Happening. Why not have him rent a pile of 70s blaxploitation movies from Blockbuster? This is but one of many missed possibilities, but I digress. Let’s get on with the story. Once he’s at Harvard, Mark discovers that racism is still alive and well in “the Cosby decade”. His landlord (Nielsen, The Naked Gun) tells the super (Altman, Pink Lady and Jeff) to find a reason to evict him ASAP. A couple of fellow students tell racist jokes whenever he’s around. It’s assumed he’s a great basketball player because he’s black (he’s not). A local cop busts him for a minor traffic offense. Mark also has to deal with the landlord’s daughter Whitney (Hardin, Iron Eagle), a rebellious sort who only wants to be with him because it will piss off her dad. All of this is way more than he bargained for. None of it is used to maximum satirical effect.
There are a couple of plot threads that make me wish Soul Man was a better movie like Mark’s romance with fellow law student Sarah (Chong, Commando), a single mother who can’t stand him at first. She’s there to work hard; he doesn’t seem to care about much of anything. Of course, her feelings change as he changes. Then she reveals something that’s an ethical game-changer. Second, Mark encounters a criminal law professor, Banks (Jones, Coming to America), who demands nothing less than excellence from his students. He explains to Mark that he has to try harder because he’s black. The romance is sweet and the student-professor relationship works because of Jones. He lends Soul Man its only note of dignity.
Soul Man isn’t completely devoid of humor. It has a couple of amusing bits like the dinner scene where Whitney’s family imagines Mark in different black stereotype guises- e.g. a Prince-like rock star, a horny dude with jungle fever and a wife-beating, heroin-using, watermelon-eating pimp. It’s the closest the movie comes to making a point about perception. Unfortunately, most of the other jokes don’t land. The most painful is a scene we’ve seen in many, MANY comedies, some dating back to the Marx Brothers. It involves a lot of people unexpectedly showing up at Mark’s place at the same time. He frantically runs from room to room to room trying to deal with each situation without alerting any of the involved parties to the others’ presence. Of course, it all comes crashing down.
The other botched scene is the climax where Mark is expected to appear before the student council to own up to what he did- i.e. fraud. Forget for a moment how the movie glosses over the ethics of what Mark did. Forget for a moment that he’d more likely be in a court of law facing criminal charges. These scenes usually come with big speeches from the accused explaining what they learned from their actions to a roomful of spectators. In Soul Man, the wrong character delivers that speech. Instead of the accused, it’s Mark’s legal counsel Gordon. He delivers it like a teenage actor playing Atticus Finch in a high school production of To Kill a Mockingbird. Or is that the point? Either way, it isn’t funny.
Howell isn’t all that great in the lead. I never for a minute believed he was black. I never felt what he was supposed to be feeling. However, I do give him credit for not slipping into a Stepin Fetchit persona. Now that would be offensive. Chong fares better as Sarah. She plays a believable character. There are characters the movie could have done without like the two annoying preppies played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Mark Neely. They serve no real purpose other than two more people to be kept in the dark about Mark’s ruse. The only difference is they want to screw Mark over for some reason.
I remember Soul Man being better than this. I liked it when I saw it back in ’86. Until this past weekend, it’s the last time I watched it in its entirety. WOW! It definitely does NOT hold up today. Hell, it wouldn’t even get made today. Maybe that’s a good thing. I’ll take Blazing Saddles any day.
