Review of Soul Man (1986) by Richard D — 03 Mar 2017
C. Thomas Howell gets into Harvard law school, but his dad (James B. Sikking) declines the offer to pay his tuition. Unable to find any means to pay it, he stumbles upon an unclaimed scholarship for black students who have been accepted to Harvard from Los Angeles.
Naturally he pretends to be black and gets the scholarship. Clearly not a film that would get made these days, even though it's perspective on race relations is pretty progressive. Howell learns things and they're all pretty straightforwardly right, and all the racial humour in the film is at the expense of racists.
It's not a particularly well-written film with plot lines dropping and reappearing as conveniently required, but Howell is an okay lead, and some of the supporting cast, including James Earl Jones, Rae Dawn Chong, Jeff Altman, Julia Louis-Drefus and Leslie Nielsen, are quite good.
A solid B-.
This review of Soul Man (1986) was written by Richard D on 03 Mar 2017.
Soul Man has generally received mixed reviews.
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