I saw this trailer the other day when I went to see Julia & Julie, and it made me sigh (I sigh a lot!).
It’s got all the right elements for my ire:
- a rich white family who is well-meaning but maybe idealistic
- a poor black kid who has nothing and a family/community who is neglectful
- a way for the poor black kid to “overcome” his poverty and background
- a feel-good redemption in the end as the rich white person ends up learning some sort of “lesson.”
- Don’t forget that the poor black kid will be tested – will he choose his abusive black community/family who will try and pull him back down? Because you know that one thing poor black communities just hate is if one of their own succeeds!
- Oh, and a line where in response to the poor kid being seen as lucky to have been adopted by the rich family, a line where she says, “I’m the lucky one.”
Yeah, I hated hated hated the trailer – but – after reading this review from Entertainment Weekly website, I might read the book (I will definitely read the book before I see the movie).
From EW‘s Margaret Lyons:
“… my concerns remain the same: that this will be a cheesy adaptation of an incredibly interesting and complex story. If you’ve read the excellent book — and I can’t recommend it highly enough — you may also worry that the movie will ignore its real strengths, namely Michael Lewis’ ability to make professional football’s shift towards a quarterback-dominant passing game sound interesting. I don’t even give a fart about football, but I loved this book.”
Will this film be another in a line of Great White Hope movies, with a side of transracial adoption? Or is this just an example of my own blind spot? We’ll have to wait and see.
Trailer below.
Harlow's Monkey 