Good Fences

Given the two big stars,this was a monumental disappointment. Predictable, stale, and full of cliches Boring!

The box description and Blockbuster's categorization of this film made it seem like it would be a comedy -- and what a reasonable categorization with Glover and Goldberg headlining. But it was far from a comedy....sort of a drama, but not interesting at all....just a real stinker. This movie has no point whatsoever, and should definitely be missed.

I believe some of the past "critics" are delving too deep. I don't believe this movie was supposed to be a upbeat comedy of such. This is a dark comedy/drama and a portrayal of the way a specific family dealt with engaging with the white community in a time when that was not easily done. I believe the scenes with 'Mabel' showing the bored housewife over the course of many years shows how more and more depressed over the situation she has become. She has lost touch with herself, her identity, her roots. She makes a statement saying that all she has to do is "listen to Tom" instead of listening to God. The son feels as if he is out of touch with his "people" and struggles to regain that sense of himself, while the sister shows that in the end, she has rejected all that makes her Black. Tom has let the influence of his childhood (almost getting lynched, struggling against white America) influence how he acts in the present. He rejects the things that make him unique (being Black), even though those things impact everything about him daily. This movie has little to do with "racial motivations" and such. It has more to do with Blacks finding their way while not losing themselves in a predominately white world. This movie is a great movie to show the other side of the coin. Black people (and minorities of color) have to deal with trying to fit in to multiple "lives" and find a way to incorporate all of them without losing a sense of self. Danny and Whoopi did a great job of portraying this, even if it did obviously make others thumb up their noses.

Rarely have so many talented people worked together to make movie that is such a mess. Everyone associated with Good Fences -- not just Glover and Goldberg, but also director Dickerson and screenwriter Ellis -- has done much better work in the past, and will do better work again in the future. But this pudding has no theme, as Churchill said. It is neither comedy nor drama, neither funny nor moving. If it has any message, it is that all white people are foolish and that black people are racially inauthentic if they value success, accomplishment, wealth, or even suburban comfort. The movie seems to agree with the character in the Robert Frost poem ("Mending Wall") that "good fences make good neighbors"; its tone argues that integration was a failure, and that blacks should stick to neckbones and avoid brie. But the narrator of Frost's poem is wiser, and says, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down."

There is a lot of undertone and subtle humor that not everyone will pick up in this movie. I found it highly intriguing and I could not help to compare my current situation to theirs, as I am moving to an even less diverse all white neighborhood tomorrow. It helped to be reminded that we shouldn't lose our own identities within the environments we live in. It think ABCs "Blackish" tackles this issue much more humorously. The issue with the patriarch in this movie is that he has internalized racism, which is something that is not talked about enough and is becoming widespread.