Hollywood loves to boil race relations down for the sake of a good melodrama or comedy. Usually, the stereotypes of race are played off of each other and other times they try to reverse them on us to see something deep within ourselves that we may have otherwise overlooked. BLACK OR WHITE is just the latest film to evoke that trend and it doesn’t even try to pretend it isn’t.
BLACK OR WHITE pits Kevin Costner against Octavia Spencer in a custody battle for the future of their mixed race granddaughter. Costner has raised her through the death of her mother and grandmother while Spencer wants her to grow up closer to her father despite his being a drug addict. The rest is a serio-comic mix of what it means to be a family in our modern society.
The movie could be good but this trailer presents it as your typical Hollywood feel good movie. The cast is strong with Anthony Mackie, Gillian Jacobs, Jennifer Ehle, and Bill Burr rounding out the cast, so it all depends on if this is a generic trailer issue or if the movie itself is this cliche.
BLACK OR WHITE opens wide in theaters on January 23, 2015.