Review of Dear White People (2014) by Ben R — 21 May 2015

I loved pretty much everything about this movie.

First of all, there's an excellent ensemble cast, and the movie manages to make a large sprawl of characters work really well, not going overboard and taking on more than it can tackle and suggesting an inner life and personality for even the more minor characters. I don't even know who to pick as the standout, because they're all great, but Tessa Thompson should be in everything because she was wonderful, communicating so much with the subtlest expression changes. There's also a kind of joy when you see previously unrelated characters interacting; I loved, for example, when Lionel and Troy became roommates, and ended up good friends at the end of the movie. Lionel and Sam teaming up at the end was also great, considering they're the two main characters despite them rarely having interacted before.

Then there's the subject matter. Some people will probably think it was overly preachy, especially when it gets blunt with the 'dear white people' messages and the explanations of the difference between racism and prejudice, etc. Personally, I didn't mind at all, because a lot of those things are rarely mentioned so explicitly in movies. Besides, though race was obvious the main theme of the movie, there were lots of subplots that made the characters feel real. Sam's father's illness, the various relationship problems/cheating, and Troy's standing up to his father might be kind of stock subplots, but they worked for me because I really liked the characters, and I liked how they were combined with the racial component to create something that felt new. The great actors doing the performing helped me forget about any common tropes, too.

There's also the great technical aspects of the movie. Everything just looks so good, and it's so stylish. I love all the rapid zoom-ins, zoom-outs, and unusual compositions, and the sound design is great, between the actual work on diegetic sound and the jazzy, thrilling score. It all just makes the whole film seem so alive, so fun and fast-paced. I find myself glancing at the clock during a lot of movies, even movies I like, but I was just having a great time for the whole movie.

I'm trying to anticipate other flaws that people might find with the movie. Like I said, the messages are pretty blunt, and sometimes that's carried to the extreme, like in the case of...well, pretty much every white person in the movie besides Sam's boyfriend. Sam's boyfriend basically serves to prove that the movie specifically anti-white for people who'd complain about that sort of thing. The other white characters, between the president, his son, and all the son's dumb friends, are ridiculously offensive, but it's kind of an odd in-between spot where they're not quite over-the-top enough to be outright satire but not low-key enough to be indicative of the most common casual racism in schools like these. I could see people arguing that the movie doesn't do a ton of good because most of the cases of racism are more subtle, and it'd be more helpful to depict those subtle cases instead of over-the-top racism. That may be true, and that might be something this film lacks, though I don't think it's exactly a deficiency. After all, these crazy cases DO happen, like Halloween parties based on race. Besides, there ARE several cases in the movie that make up for the general lack of variety in the white people. There are Lionel's two white friends at the newspaper who both display subtle signs of prejudice, like George's uncomfortable view of Lionel as new and exotic, like a Hershey bar, with his big hair. And there are black characters like Coco and Troy's father, who hold new interesting points of view contrary to outspoken people like Sam.

Overall, this was a fun, lively movie with a lot of humor, a lot of legitimate drama, and a cast of characters who transcend stock types with great performances and interesting perspectives to explore on race.