It would have been even crazier if Gene's suit all of a sudden said "No Independent Thought". Then they show Roger and his suit says "Do Not Question Authority". Then the whole screen when showing clips from Soul Man is only audio and it says "OBEY" on it! That would be Roddy Piper's opportunity to jump into the studio armed with ammunition and sunglasses and he says "I have come here to chew bubblegum and blow away imbecilic movie critics...and I'm all out of bubblegum!" ~Dutch
I remember my mom telling me that the professor was actually the voice of Darth Vader when we were watching this 25 years ago and I couldn't believe it!!
The fact that they mention how C. Thomas Howell and Rae Dawn Chong had no chemistry in the movie is even weirder when you realize the two of them fell in love during filming and later got married.
I don't know, putting aside the need to really have to suspend disbelief that anyone in the movie would have believed Howell was a young black man. The premise had potential in doing a sharp, incisive comedy about racism, and the black experience. Unfortunately it's squandered as both Siskel and Ebert pointed out, by some infantile heavy-handed comedy. Subtlety is definitely given a wide berth. The best that can be said for it is that the filmmakers had the best of intentions, even though they got it horribly wrong.
He's very good in comedies. Especially when he made that hilarious appearance hosting SNL. The skit where he was spoofing "Risky Business". While the parents were away, he slides across the hallway to "Old Time Rock & Roll" and you see a shadow of him dancing from outside the White House. :)))
@@tomservo5007 It doesn’t help that it was written like a bad sitcom. It could have worked if more actual thoughtfulness went into its approach rather than just play it all for cheap laughs.
Yep. He had the funniest daydream in the extremely funny dinner scene with the girlfriend's family. He imagined Mark as a Watermelon eating Pimp. hahaha.
Absolutely. Hollywood knows how to make comedies that offend people with bodily functions. Why not make one that makes people uncomfortable over something that might actually make them think?
Roger reportedly dates Oprah Winfrey and was one of her biggest supporters when she was approached to do a TV talk show. He later was married for over 20 years to an African-American woman. The movie never does really touch in race issues the way it thinks it does.
One of the best and funniest comedies of the 80's, ahead of its time, totally misunderstood and underrated by humourless critics . It couldn't be made today in a stiff politically correct Hollywood.
I love how the content section is casually avoiding the truth of this movie. It's racist as all hell! instead ppl are talking about how good an actor he was and that Leslie Neilsen was in it lol. Racist must love this movie
What the movie is really talking about is how African Americans have legal privilege over everyone else. And if you want some hard truth about racism African Americans are the most racist people in the world because they feel resentful for not having something that actually doesn't exist for anybody
I saw this as a comedy first. Everyone knew the premise was ridiculous and that was the point. However, although the dinner table scene and the basketball scenes were HILARIOUS, the scene with Rae Dawn Chong in the dorm room with his parents and the girl in his bed was HORRIBLY written. Poor Arye Gross was trying to squeeze juice from a turnip with all of his lines. The movie definitely had heart and charm and I was really interested in where it was going in the first 45 minutes or so, but it really fell flat after that.
But, he's right. Most jobs will fire you for not showing up because of an arrest or other things. That's life and University should be teaching about real life, not just books.
I'd be interested in seeing a sequel that tries to tackle reparations. Maybe a scene like like something from those California Legislature hearings where blacks are asking for awards of diamonds, rubies, a "million dollars", etc.
Let me be the real black in the comments: Why is James Earl Jones in this, you can't be in a movie about blackface and then give us a lecture on life Yes I saw it, I wish I didn't but we all saw it more than once, once on TV as a child and later in life as a refresher of wtf did I just watch 🤣 Why not just never go to school period, if you're going in blackface clearly you don't need to be here Why do they do every stereotype possible as if he gets a pass because he has a tan, a tan isn't Black and even if he was he'd still get checked for it The girl in this married this guy in real life right after this film wrapped, look it up Siskel and Ebert wanted more out of a movie about blackface, they wanted more romance and aha moments in this insensitive comedy where a man is literally abusing a system meant to help minorities because they were being denied an education EVERYBODY BELIEVES HE'S BLACK SMH, nobody once questions it or knows ever without him telling them one by one, even his parents don't know it's him, he never changes a thing about himself but his skin color to tan and suddenly he's: A threat A savage A Pimp Pro Athlete A dancer Musician Thief Movie ends like all movies of the 80s where nobody learned a thing and nobody was punished for it, the situation somehow magically worked itself out in the end regardless of whether the protagonist did something or not
Why in the world can someone not be "in a movie about blackface?" Stop being a censor and telling us what a movie can or cannot be about. Like Ebert said, he thought it was a fantastic premise. It sounded like he thought it could lead to a good exploration of social issues. A white person could understand what it's like to live as a black person for a day. Can you not see how that could be educational for everyone in the audience? Instead you're whining about "blackface." Stop being such a pearl-clutcher who's offended by things that don't hurt anybody. Also, "blackface" refers to a specific type of exaggerated makeup that hasn't been used in entertainment in a hundred years or so. Someone putting on makeup to try and look like a real person of a different race is not "blackface." Being offended by that makes zero sense at all. it just represents a complete confusion about what "blackface" is.
@@jedijones if you needed Soul Man to learn about the plight of black people then I feel sorry for the whites that did and it is too blackface because the whole point was to portray another race in comedic fashion which the film does multiple times, just because he does it mostly in fantasies doesn't mean it's not being done and what are you saying he's trans racial because that's not what he's saying, he knows he's exploiting a system in the guise of another race and could care less when it's all over, the man only wanted to go to college to please his parents and dropped the act as soon as he was done so I'm very confused about why when Hollywood cleans it up from the minstrel shows of the 1800s that now suddenly I'm supposed to be like at least they're learning give it a pass?
@@bobthebear1246 I agree. This was not done particularly smart. It basically used blackface largely for cheap laughs rather than anything consistently of real substance. Had the movie been approached more intellectually and thoughtfully, it might have been a lot better than it was. As it stands, it’s just a dumb comedy that uses blackface in no less a repellant manner than how it was used in vaudeville.
This movie was hysterically funny!!! How the hell could Siskel and Ebert not like this movie?? They've given thumbs down to some movies which most critics on average would have given thumbs up to. I sometimes just don't understand these two. ~Dutch
It’s because the movie was written purely for cheap laughs, no thought or wit was put into it whatsoever. They are right, especially Ebert. It was a missed opportunity.
this was a funny movie - especially the basketball scene. I laughed so hard during that scene. I didn't care much for the drama. I was a kid in the 80s and I didn't think too much of the racial undertones - I mean, who cares ? It's a comedy.
Movie is criminally underrated. Thomas c howell did a phenomenal job. Had this movie been a serious role and not comedy he would of been up for some major awards. I really dont get the hate this movie got. We can make movies about brad pit being the mexican. Tom cruise can be the last samurai. Bruce leroy can be the last dragon but thomas c howell couldnt play a black man? Smh
it got hate because it's too real. Simple. Same way moronic critics panned Scarface. They didn't get it. Alot of the time their privileged Whiteness prevents them from seeing what's actually real.
Well for all of you crying Downey jr won a Oscar for doing the same thing in tropic thunder so the goal was accomplished and that movie seemed less offensive !!
It’s because the movie was written like a bad sitcom and played it’s shock value for cheap laughs. If it had been done more intellectually, it might have had a real chance.
It absolutely appalls me that a lot of people consider this movie an anti-black racist film. Yes, there was bigotry in the film portrayed by certain characters, such as those 2 douche bag students who kept saying those terrible black jokes throughout the movie (which they got their fill in the end by Mark, who made the African American community proud). However, the bigotry was a backdrop of what Mark had to unexpectedly go through - along with the stereotypes - in exchange for disguising himself as an African American college applicant. Like James Earl Jones said to him in the end after Mark's revelation: "You learned something I could never teach my students. You know what it feels like to be black." Mark's response to that soon after was perfect. However, the film is not at all portrayed as anti-black nor promoting racism in anyway. The only people who say that, most likely, never saw the film. As a matter of fact, all the black people in this film, such as Sara's parents, even the servant in the extremely funny dinner scene, were the most normal, while the white people were the ones that were insane. :))) The black characters, such as Rae Dawn Chong and James Earl Jones was incredible, and Rae Dawn Chong's son was adorable. Mark's relationship and chemistry with Sara was as genuine as Whitney Huston and Kevin Costner's in "The Bodyguard". I wish there were more interracial relationships like that in film, unlike the poor attempt in the piece of shit film "Romeo Must Die". So the film was not at all being racist the way most people thought. Actually the portrayal of the racial sterotypes was extremely funny. A lot of my black friends who saw this movie thought it was absolutely hilarious and did not in any way find this movie offensive. Besides the basketball scene, they loved the scene when Mark was going to the "BLSA" meeting (The Militant Group) Hahahaha. Actually, even if this film was very funny, it was also a serious film loosely based on the 20th century classic non-fiction novel "Black Like Me", which was the same premise, except it was a white reporter's experimentation of what it was like being black in the south during the mid 50's. It's too bad this film was somewhat overlooked. The movie was moving, it was extremely funny, and it was also educational.
First of all the lead character looked ridiculous in black face, and I that was a major turn off to many. I think a lot of people agree with you that the premise of the movie was ambitious, and it made some solid statements on anti-black racism. It’s just that the execution of the movie was terrible, and it overall treated racism as too jokey-jokey. How can you compare this mediocre movie to black like me? One of the more poignant novels in literary history
In comparison to the black and white films of the early-to-mid 1900's, I think the mention of "Blackface" to describe this film is a little too extreme, don't you think? And keep in mind, I am not a racist, ok? I did not speak ill against black people, and I did not show ANY disrespect in mentioning about that great novel "Black Like Me". I said the film was "LOOSELY" based on that non-fiction classic. You are attacking the wrong person. Keep in mind also: if the film was THAT appalling to the black community, don't you think that most of the black actors in that film, including the highly respectful stature of James Earl Jones, would not only have refused to be in this movie, but would've heavily boycotted this film themselves?
This movie was funny as hell people are too sensitive. In the 80s everybody thought this movie was funny including black people. The only people that are offended by this movie are racists. Or Spike Lee (known racist) who said the scholarship should’ve went to a black person. Why do we have scholarships for black people? That’s stupid. Scholarships should be based on merit and he had the grades, sorry snowflakes but that’s the way it should be. The movie was funny and it was 1986
It pandered to the lowest common denominator though like a bad sitcom. That makes its use of blackface repellant rather than any bit clever. Also, to your question about affirmative action, as Martin Luther King, Jr once said, “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”
That's not how art works. Art moves forward by its critics and to say that you can't critique because you don't create is just stupid. Think about this for anything at all. If you are not a professional chef are you not allowed to critique the food at a fancy restaurant for being below your expectations? If the prose of a novel is boring, are you not allowed to say anything since you're not a writer? Your argument is lame and has been passed along by shallow thinking philistines for many years.
That’s no excuse to make movies, even comedies, that just try to shock for cheap laughs like this clearly did rather than try to approach it with any actual intellect.
Gawd,what a horrible film. Oh,well.At least Hollywood won't ever try anything like this again---like,say,oh,I don't know,uh,two black cops in their 30s who go undercover as,uh,aaaaaas,uh...two white teenage girls!I mean,who's be stupid enough to make something like that?!?
that's how it is. True edgy material (not pretend-edgy) is always ahead of the curve and rattles some cages. Then people realize that it was actually brilliant.
Idc about this films “good intentions” It’s just not the same imagine if spike lee made a film about a chris rock pretending to be a Jewish boy trying to get to a trip to birthright? Would’ve never seen the light of day.
I dunno. The movie didn't offend me. I found nothing wrong with it and I got the fact that they were poking fun at stereotypes, racism and white privilege. I thought it was a comedy with a message.
Barack Obama entered Harvard Law school just a couple years after this movie was made. I wonder if he encountered the same things as a white-acting, white-sounding, raised-in-white-family person but with black skin?
This movie was such a disaster it caused all sorts of collateral damage. It was the end of C Thomas Howell's hopes for an A or even B list career. Its did the same to Rae Dong Chong. It was offensive AND above all an awful movie.
it did well at the box office..not sure if affected their careers they weren`t exactly "A" list actors before or after...it was released by New World pictures which was famous for "B" movies..
@@babybird871 C Thomas Howell had been receiving lead roles in well known, popular teen comedies like 'Secret Admirer', as well as prominent roles in iconic films like 'Red Dawn' and 'The Outsiders'. Without going on IMBd, I can't think of a single lead role in any known film after that. Very similar results or Rae Dong Chong. So, maybe they weren't yet A listers but their careers were on the rise before Soul Man. Its not an uncommon story in Hollywood, Bombs or offensive movies cause collateral damage.
Secret Admirer wasn`t very successful. I remember him later in Gettysburg..and as a good not great actor..a lot of actors in that area never become solid leads.. The only other film I remember Rae Chong in was Commando.
scottjulie27 pretty hilarious how conservatives find that want to stigmatize people who seek justice for all. Wanting social justice...how evil! It’s not like it’s in our founding doctrine or anything “liberty and justice for all”
Soul Man was hilarious! Siskel and Ebert are too tight-assed to get the humor. This movie shows how blacks get handouts in the form of Affirmative Action. Hopefully our nation's lawmakers see Soul Man and finally outlaw Affirmative Action!
sbtbfanatic What do you think of that statement now. Since Lori Laughlin, Felicity Huffman and others are being taken down because of paying for special slots for they’re children in athletics to go to Ivy League Universities. White privilege all the way around. Hum....
Speaking of handouts, how on Earth did all of the German, Dutch and Swedish immigrants come up with hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland in the midwest corn belt, they sure didn't buy it?
