Soul Man (1986)

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The acting in this movie is really good.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

If this movie were released today, people would be outraged and call to have this movie banned, especially thinking about how sensitive this generation is. Anyways, "Soul Man" is about a college aged white male named Mark who dresses up in black face in order to attend Harvard Law School. Once immersed in a black student's life, Mark finds that people are less lenient than he imagined and more prone to see him as a black person instead of a fellow student. He meets a young African-American student named Sarah Walker, whom he first only flirts with; gradually, however, he genuinely falls in love with her. As it turns out, she was the original candidate for the scholarship which he had usurped, and now she has to work hard as a waitress to support herself and her son George while studying. Slowly, Mark begins to regret his deed, and after a chaotic day-in which Sarah, his parents (who are not aware of his double life) and his classmate Whitney, who is also his landlord's daughter, make surprise visits at the same time-he drops the charade and openly reveals himself to be white.C. Thomas Howell's acting is pretty good in this. I found the chemistry between C. Thomas Howell and Rae Chong Dawn very convincing. James Earl Jones' acting was very good. And Leslie Nielsen as Whitney's father was also pretty funny.Overall, Soul Man has a John Hughes-esque feel to it, and is up there with Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Weird Science. If you aren't easily offended, I recommend you check this out.

Mark Watson (C. Thomas Howell) is the pampered son of a wealthy family. An intelligent soul, Mark is destined for a four year stint at Harvard Law School, where he and his pal plan on becoming lawyers and being well off for the rest of their lives. A snag in Mark's plan comes when his father's psychiatrist suggests that his father begin to focus on himself rather than the needs of others, which results in Mark's father refusing to pay for his college tuition, playing the old "self responsibility" card. Mark totals the cost of tuition, room, and board for Harvard Law and realizes that he needs $50k to finance the next few years, all but crushing his plans of attending his dream college if he's forced to finance it by himself.Without a lot of options, Mark looks into various scholarships, stumbling upon one that looks good, although the primary qualification is the individual applying need be African-American. In an act of sheer desperation, Mark takes a handful of tanning pills to appear African-American so he can apply for the scholarship. He winds up getting the scholarship, which offers him a full ride to the school and gets him on the fast-track to success. It isn't until he meets a less fortunate African-American woman named Sarah (Rae Dawn Chong), who is in one of his law classes and struggling to balance her college life and personal life.To begin with, the assertion that a film like Steve Miner's Soul Man couldn't be made today is immediately dismissed with the fact that the Shawn and Marlon Wayans' film White Chicks, where two African-Americans impersonated white women, and Robert Downey Jr.'s performance as an African-American gunslinger in Tropic Thunder both exist and were made in the 2000's. Having said that, to assert that Soul Man is at all offensive is another knee-jerk reaction to the film's premise, which is executed in a way that's interesting, if nothing else. In some ways, Soul Man is one of the earliest depictions of class divisions and white privilege in a comedy film, especially one as mainstream as this one was.Consider the scene when a cop is trailing Mark while he is casually driving down the road in his vehicle. When the driver of a parked car suddenly swings their door open, Mark abruptly swerves, which results in the cop immediately pulling Mark over for allegedly changing lanes without a signal. Mark is then charged with being surly to an officer and must spend the following day behind bars, missing his important law test. This very scene illustrates the blatant discrimination in the law; had Mark been white, he almost certainly wouldn't have been pulled over, much less followed by the police officer.Scenes like this, amidst many others including the casual exchange of racist jokes and the cold looks from random pedestrians, really show the kind of discrimination that is so widely seen and discussed in the modern day. However, Soul Man's nearly fatal flaw is its sitcom approach to this idea. Writer Carol Black tries desperately hard to unnecessarily soften the material for a mainstream audience by adding in ridiculous scenes like Mark's parents coming the same time Sarah comes to study with Mark and a sex-crazed yuppie is in Mark's bedroom. In addition, any time Mark shares the scene with his roommate and pal Gordon (Arye Gross), the comedy of the film stalls almost entirely.Soul Man's desire to constantly find a punchline in every scene comes close to making its depiction of white privilege almost entirely moot. However, Soul Man does get big bonus points for not making its statements about casual racism an overblown moral in the film, with scenes of moralizing set to charming orchestration to make the audience feel warm and fuzzy. The scenes are very humbly depicted and morals are quietly communicated throughout, which makes this film sort of a blessing in disguise when it comes to the way it handles loftier emotions. This is the very definition of a film that's a wash, complete with strong social commentary amidst sitcom-style humor and subtle morals communicated through ridiculous situational comedy.Starring: C. Thomas Howell, Rae Dawn Chong, and Arye Gross. Directed by: Steve Miner.

What can I say? Some trashy movies can become addictive. This is one of those movies. With each viewing, you discover something new. It's definately a thought-provoking film, at times preachy, at times heart-warming romance, at times slapstick, and at times blatantly racist. And yes, at times painfully stupid. C. Thomas Howell may well have done the poorest job in film history of impersonating a black man, and black people nationwide were justifiably offended. The epiphany Howell undergoes toward the end of the film only partially redeems his character. The wonderful performance by James Earl Jones as the dour Professor Banks, and of course Arye Gross as Howell's hilarious sidekick Gordon go a long way toward's salvaging what could have been a preachy, sentimental mess. Well, almost. From me it get's a 4/10. But like I say, it's addictive. Somewhat like popcorn. Final verdict: Not a bad rental, and if you can find the DVD at Walmart for under $10 go ahead and buy it.

When I started to watch this film I thought, not another teen movie. That's not to say it wasn't funny because it was hilarious but then something happened in the film as it began to give a message of racism in American society in particular(and the world by inference). The premise that a white student could become black just by using tanning pills is so ridiculous but if you get over that funny leap in belief and you give this film your time you will be rewarded with a sentimental love story with a anti-racist message and what's more, the movie makes you think- what if I were black? Would I be treated like that just on the basis of the colour(or color as you Americans spell it) of my skin?The main character Howell comes across as a bit of a j***k, pardon my language, at first but you see him mature with what he sees happening around him. His self importance disappears with every racist moment and we are left with not a broken man as maybe someone who had to put up with it all through their life (a Black person) but because he can go back to being seen as important in society (i.e. a white man) he is left enriched by the experience and an infinitely better person. The love angle is very well portrayed especially by two people who actually went on to get married after the movie in real life which just shows the chemistry between them on screen. The only thing after seeing this movie that I can see wrong with it is its competing ideas and themes- you are not sure what you have watched, was it a teen movie, love story, drama or anti-racist 'propaganda'. Personally as someone who likes all those types of movies I think it is the my greatest modern movie of all time. 10/10