Same Kind of Different as Me (Michael Carney, 2017)

[Cronenfly]

Little Men has gotten some decent notices, at least by those not put off by its take on gentrification. And Auto Focus is the tits and well worth anyone's time.

[dda1996a]

Watch as two Oscar nominees and two Oscar winners overcome racism and prejudice and learn the true value of friendship so they can pay their mortgages and their plastic surgery.
OH, and "Renée Zellweger like you have never seen her before"

[CSM126]

It's like someone made a bet that they could make a film worse than The Blind Side. The other person took the bet of course, because holy crap nothing could be worse than The Blind Side, this'll be easy money.

They may lose. This could be the worse film. It looks to have the potential.

[dda1996a]

I'm actually surprised Bullock isn't in this. It's like she own the awful sentimental films somehow nominated for best picture, which along with Blind Side, include two films that are even worst, the "only worth it for the five minutes Von Sydow is one screen" Extremely loud and the "having a Mexican maid is the only important thing in the world, because if you fall the only person who will answer your cry for help is the foreign maid you paid no attention to until now" aka Crash.

[domino harvey]

While hardly art, the Blind Side is not a bad film and isn't really a Nice White Lady story if you've actually seen it, unless there's something wrong with taking care of and doing what's best for a child who otherwise was not provided with the opportunities suddenly made available to him-- frankly, charges of racism lobbed at the film are a thousandfold more racist than anything found in the film. It's not any better than a TV movie, but for such an easy target, it's not a fair one-- then again, I've actually seen it, so I guess that puts me at an unfair advantage in the race to score cheap points.

As awful as this looks (and it does look awful), it's a little sad for so many, even jokingly, to already declare Same Kind of Different as Me a hated film. I named the thread, so it's not like I'm opposed to having a laugh at the film (or any film), but I'm also open to the possibility that the film could be competent or even good-- stranger things have happened, and everyone here could name numerous beloved films with shitty trailers. Is it likely for this film? Probably not, but I'm not going to call it the new the Room on the basis of one trailer either [/wet blanket]

[CSM126]

I have seen The Blind Side and to me it came across as the story of a well-off white lady adopting a black kid and then expecting everyone to be impressed that she would be brace enough to have one of those scary negroes 'round the house. Such a sacrifice, taking in a black kid.

[domino harvey]

I have seen The Blind Side and to me it came across as the story of a well-off white lady adopting a black kid and then expecting everyone to be impressed that she would be brace enough to have one of those scary negroes 'round the house. Such a sacrifice, taking in a black kid.

Based on what? She doesn't look for accolades at all, she does what she thinks is right and necessary when faced with the living situation of the young man in question and faces pushback from her social circle for her actions, not praise

[dda1996a]

It's still a shit film nonetheless. No point arguing about it, let's keep trashing this new best picture hopeful or most likely 50+ Sunday comfort watch

[Mr Sausage]

Someone who's seen the film more recently (and maybe has a more nuanced understanding than me of racist constructions) can say whether or not this is racist, but what I disliked most about The Blind Side was how it infantilized its main black character. Though ostensibly a teenager from the projects, the film made him act like a five-year-old, often just to mine some low comedy from the situation. I remember an especially egregious scene where Kathy Bates tries to get him to choose Ole Miss by scaring this impossibly credulous, lip-quivering teenager with a story about how they bury human remains under the pitch of some rival University and therefore the thing's haunted.

Indeed, this and some other scenes made the teenager's later triumphant, feel-good declaration that there was no bias in his selection process, that he chose Ol' Miss ethically, on his own, because it's the tradition of his family, these scenes made it ring hollow since the movie shows none of his own attempts to think through his place and his values, but a number of scenes of unethical manipulation of this teenager. And thinking of that brought me to realize my main objection: the black character in this film has no real agency or interiority in the film. With the exception of his decision to beat up some other youths in the project (and therefore reject, finally, all that held him back), he's never shown to be a reasoning, decision-making individual. He's treated as though he's undeveloped: he's child-like, with his decisions coming mostly from instinct as guided by the adults making the choices and decisions for him. The film makes so much of his being motivated by protectionist instincts that it almost suggests he can't figure out how to play football until given a simplistic allegory to follow. All the agency, interiority, and character are given to Sandra Bullock, so much so that I often forgot she was raising a teenager (that scene where he raps in the car with his foster brother startled me--up to that point I think I was unconsciously treating the character as mentally handicapped).

Again, I don't know if this counts as racism, but at the risk of being called 1000 times more racist myself, I think it wouldn't be hard to argue that the movie is.

[domino harvey]

I think it's more than fair to say the film is more concerned with and focused on Bullock than the kid, because it is (it's her movie, not his), but I don't think his portrayal is racist (and I appreciate you floating the supposition without accusing the film outright), as we shouldn't criticize a film for not painting a given black character in the fullest or most-impressive brush strokes anymore than we should complain about how Bullock's other (white) kids are even less fully formed or fleshed out in the film-- which is to say, it's a fair complaint from a lazy screenwriting stance, but he's not the only significant character to be treated in this fashion by the film (hell, everyone who isn't Bullock pretty much is). Like anything, if you want to be uncharitable, you can read this as denigrating the kid, but I thought there was a lot of truth in the depiction (which I did not find negative, rather sympathetic and showing he was a good guy who had limited avenues up until his adoption) from my own years spent working in the inner city with youths not unlike this (and many more completely unlike him, of course)

[dda1996a]

But that still is a problem. Take the Help for example, which is only disappointing rather than awful because of its cast and their performance. But the film is still how white people helped black people, again focusing on black white relations from the white saviors. If wouldn't call both film racist, as it don't really think they are (they still try and help black people, and sorry if this is worded badly).
But having a full film about an underprivileged black high schooler and then completely push him aside to put a rich white woman at the center is incredibly problematic.

[flyonthewall2983]

The title of this alone is terrible. It's practically a tongue twister.

[Noiradelic]

While hardly art, the Blind Side is not a bad film

Whatever one's feelings about The Blind Side sociologically, it was made with a certain level of competence. It's one of Bullock's better performances and contains elements that rise above cliche, like Bullock's character and the community being Republican.

Given Blind Side, With Honors and The Soloist and SKoDaM appearing to fit in with of the recent spate of faith-based movies, including Kinnear's own Heaven is For Real, I think it's a safe bet this is not going to make any Top Ten lists this year.

[knives]

Since I haven't seen Blind Side I won't talk about it, but since this conversation isn't in its thread and seems to be speaking to larger trends in contemporary film and film criticism I won't recuse myself. I'll be using The Intouchables instead since it is very closely following The Blind Side's pattern being from around the same time and also based on a true story with a lot of what gets it accused of racism baked in. Now that I'm done with that annoyingly collegiate intro I think that the real problem is that most people (especially on the Internet) are dumb and don't know how to frame the argument of racism well. The development of discussion on racism has sifted into the mainstream well so it doesn't take much to be able to identify that something could be problematic, but again people are dumb and thus equate potentiality with reality.

In a lot of these cases I think actually a combo of Dom's and Mr. Sausage's arguments are the most valid in that I don't think the artists are racist. In fact most of these films seem to be built to combat racism and breed unity, but as with their forefather Stanley Kramer most of these films are either too dumb, too sloppily made, or too cowardly to actually accomplish that with these factors causing the films to accidentally become quite problematic. Specific to Mr. Sausage's examples that sloppiness which is often to blame nowadays sort of sets the films to default to very racist characterization because society at large is still quite racist. So in the micro I don't think something like The Intouchables is racist and would in fact feel comfortable saying the artists' intentions are to make the world less racist. To paraphrase Dom though the writing is extremely sloppy and lazy with the focus of the story on the invalid white hero leaving the black worker to be developed more through short cuts. Short cuts being short cuts I don't think the writers thought through what they were doing and thus didn't realize that he short cuts of characterization for a black character even when they are heroic remain for now racist leaving us with in this case a character modeled on the Stepin Fetchit stereotype (Mr. Sausage's comments lead me to assume that the kid in The Blind Side is closer to Sabu). That is a macro example of racism, but still doesn't make The Intouchables on the individual level racist. It's more damning of society at large rather than the film in particular and it doesn't seem useful to discuss the film as racist if you're only going to talk about the film.

Now of course even that very surface level explanation of the film's relationship to race is far too complex for Internet critics thus making it easier to say, "well you have a black man working for a white man therefore it must be racist," which frankly is not correct. That said, and this is where I guess I'm nudging you a bit Dom, you can come to that simplistic answer even after watching the film because there are problems with race present even if most are not educated in people like Edward Said enough or are just too dumb to grasp that the problem isn't specific to the film in question.

[Gregory]

The title of this alone is terrible. It's practically a tongue twister.

That title is a really muddled inspirational/devotional brain-teaser, which ties into a few points I have about the book the film is adapting that I thought were relevant and potentially interesting for those unfamiliar with it:

First, in the case of the book Same Kind of Different, I especially mistrusted the entire way she shaped Denver Moore's words and voice. "Negro dialect" was used in ways so exaggerated at times that it reminded me of Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus), and I have doubts that it fairly represents the way Moore really speaks. The whole "we is all homeless" thing, which is given such importance in the book and the trailer, is a good example. If one listens to Moore express the idea himself, he doesn't say "we is" he says "we are." (I had a hard time finding video clips of him speaking, because it seems that when he appears somewhere with Ron Hall, Hall does all the talking and leaves Moore sitting there saying nothing, or on the sidelines and off the podium entirely.)

And the dialect isn't even consistent. The book has him saying "figure" on one page and then right after that it's "figger." The writing gives him a wonderful grasp of vocabulary and complex description yet constantly needs to remind you that he's uneducated and says things like "wadn't" instead of "wasn't." And practically anytime he refers to a famous historical figure it has to be preceded by "a fella named..."

It's also worth noting that the bestselling success of the book is mainly the work of staunch conservative evangelical Christian author Lynn Vincent, whose other memoirs include Heaven Is for Real and Palin's book Going Rogue. (The movie adaptation of Heaven Is for Real also starred Kinnear.) She cowrote a book Donkey Cons, which characterizes the Democratic Party as "pro-gangster" and the "party of treason and subversion" (treason includes not backing the 2003 war on Iraq, and historically they allege that FDR was a mere "puppet" of Stalin), with Robert Stacy McCain, who once stated that “the media now force interracial images into the public mind” and that “a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion.” Her own commentary pieces aren't a far cry from Ann Coulter. So, based what I've read of Vincent's work and how often she's positioned herself as a mouthpiece for fanatics, I wouldn't trust any memoir she writes to be more than an "inspirational" fictionalized story with something to sell.

It says a lot that they seemed to consider this mushy-headed "same kind of different as me" idea the central theme of the book: It's not only the title but the closing idea of the book, where under Denver Moore's name it's written that he used to worry that he was different from others but then realized that "everybody's different—the same kind of different as me...we is all homeless—just workin our way toward home." I don't understand where the difference comes in. The statement emphasizes difference but then treats it as a non-issue because earth "ain't no final restin place" for any of us. So the story involves very real differences between people on earth and then manipulatively tells their story to direct the reader toward a heavy-handed "pie in the sky" message and a denial of concerns about systemic inequality and lack of equal opportunity in our society with the feel-good idea that "we're all just regular folks walkin down the road God set in front of us." So at the end of the book Moore gets to move into a mansion and work for "Mr. Ron" while millions of others remain actually homeless, but in a way we're "all homeless," and we're all supposed to feel fine and even inspired by this state of affairs?

[flyonthewall2983]

God, it'll be hilarious if this thread reaches Tree Of Life proportions by the time it comes out.

[Swift]

Except, I doubt anyone here is actually likely to see this thing in the end.

[CSM126]

Except, I doubt anyone here is actually likely to see this thing in the end.

Oh, I'll see it. Anything that looks this ridiculous needs to be seen.

[Ashirg]

Before the film is out, you can also read the book - http://www.samekindofdifferentasme.com/default.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[domino harvey]

It begins outside a burning plantation hut in Louisiana... and an East Texas honky-tonk... and, without a doubt, in the heart of God.

Impossible to take that last part seriously in the wake of "the literal heart of Jesus" from the Fault in Our Stars. I also don't like the implication that an East Texas honky-tonk is demonstrably different from the heart of God-- there go all my treasured mental pictures of Heaven!

[sir_luke]

In the "Reviews" section, there are only two, one of which is just a short summary while the other has a paragraph devoted to the book's "disappointing" lack of Scriptural foundation and mention of "visitation" from the dead (should I have spoiler tagged that?)... Still, the reviewer presciently predicts the eventual purchase of movie rights.

Also, one of the reviewer's reasons for eventually caving to a stranger's demand to read the book is that it has "a great cover"

[jbeall]

Someone who's seen the film more recently (and maybe has a more nuanced understanding than me of racist constructions) can say whether or not this is racist, but what I disliked most about The Blind Side was how it infantilized its main black character. Though ostensibly a teenager from the projects, the film made him act like a five-year-old, often just to mine some low comedy from the situation. I remember an especially egregious scene where Kathy Bates tries to get him to choose Ole Miss by scaring this impossibly credulous, lip-quivering teenager with a story about how they bury human remains under the pitch of some rival University and therefore the thing's haunted.

Indeed, this and some other scenes made the teenager's later triumphant, feel-good declaration that there was no bias in his selection process, that he chose Ol' Miss ethically, on his own, because it's the tradition of his family, these scenes made it ring hollow since the movie shows none of his own attempts to think through his place and his values, but a number of scenes of unethical manipulation of this teenager. And thinking of that brought me to realize my main objection: the black character in this film has no real agency or interiority in the film. With the exception of his decision to beat up some other youths in the project (and therefore reject, finally, all that held him back), he's never shown to be a reasoning, decision-making individual. He's treated as though he's undeveloped: he's child-like, with his decisions coming mostly from instinct as guided by the adults making the choices and decisions for him. The film makes so much of his being motivated by protectionist instincts that it almost suggests he can't figure out how to play football until given a simplistic allegory to follow. All the agency, interiority, and character are given to Sandra Bullock, so much so that I often forgot she was raising a teenager (that scene where he raps in the car with his foster brother startled me--up to that point I think I was unconsciously treating the character as mentally handicapped).

Again, I don't know if this counts as racism, but at the risk of being called 1000 times more racist myself, I think it wouldn't be hard to argue that the movie is.

Probably more appropriate for the Blind Side thread, if it even exists, but just wanted to add that Michael Oher himself has criticized the film on roughly the same grounds Mr. Sausage does here.

[The Narrator Returns]

Paramount seems to be just as taken with the film as this forum was

[Professor Wagstaff]

Wonder what's happening over at Paramount. They similarly dumped The Little Prince this way in 2016 and have bungled quite a few releases, from the catastrophe that was Ben-Hur plus some sequels that majorly underperformed this year. I believe Star Trek Beyond was their biggest hit and would still be considered something of a disappointment financially.

[flyonthewall2983]

The mountain has been crumbling for a little bit. Between it's current power struggles involving it's elderly owner and losing out on the Marvel franchises to Disney, it's no wonder crap like this and that monster truck movie are getting releases.