Higher Learning

I wish Singleton would keep his obvious bias racially feelings out of his movies and just make a movie that's real, instead of this laughable, trite garbage.

Example: In the movie 'Boyz In The Hood', Laurence Fishburne is giving a speech to his son and son's buddy and says "Why do you think there's a liquor store and gun store on every single corner in black neighborhoods? I'll tell you why. Because they want us to kill ourselvs." Yes, I can see how movies with black people suggesting evil white people are conspiring to kill all black people by "making them kill each other" will advance race relations.

As for Higher Learning, I think the title should have been shortened to 'High'. One must be very high to watch a movie like this and feel 'enlightened' by the end of the movie.

Let's see, basically all white males in this movie are either one of two things: Very bad or very weak. All black people are either cool, heroic, intelligent or victims.

Whites in this movie: The evil racist campus security, the evil white jock rapist, the weak white hippy who tries his hardest to understand Malik but Malik turns him down, the weak Jewish roommate who shits his pants like a little girl when Remmy pulls a gun on him, yet Malik plays it cool of course, and of course the oh so very evil and BAAAAD nazi skinheads! Oh yes, nazi skinheads are just killing black people daily in college campuses and all over the country. And of course the skinheads are very weak and stupid like Remmy.

Blacks in the movie: Laurence Fishurne as a wise professor, the strong black woman "I don't take no buuuulllshit" roommate, Ice Cube's cool street smart character, Malik's "struggle" to find himself in an evil white man's world, Tyra Bank's intelligent character who becomes a victim, Busta' Rhymes beating up two skinheads at one time etc etc.

What a bunch of laughable and ridiculous clichés. Singleton definitely has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to white people. This movie was every bit as racist as any pro nazi skinhead documentary. Worst movie ever made.

After seeing this film I can't help but wonder what the screenwriting process was for Singleton. Higher Learning is a movie with every cliche I can imagine; really very pathetic. Higher Learning is good for one reason, it forces you to think about racial issues if you hadn't already, but once the glimmer of the racially just manifesto you created wears off, you realize what a load of crap this movie was. Acting was good, even Tyra Banks, who I wasn't expecting anything from, didn't make me want to gouge my eyes out. The story is, as I mentioned, cliche. It's not so bad that you should demand the money back from Blockbuster but if you really want to see a "racially profound" film, choose something else.

Hard to believe the extremes of the reviews of this film. It's either genius or crap. I found it somewhere in between, and I have to say I enjoyed it, owing mostly to Omar Epps. I believe he's one of the best actors in America right now, and his performance in this movie really made it watchable as far as I'm concerned. Many of the characters were not developed well, and were two-dimensional at best. Rappaport's character, and in fact all the white supremacists, were mere cut-outs and actually painful to watch. I didn't get the good guy/bad guy (name your race -- I think it depends on who's reviewing) theme at all. I think Epps was the protagonist and naturally he was shown in a better light than most of the other characters, black or white. There was some intelligent dialog and some inane dialog. However, it was overall an interesting film and I'm glad I saw it. Not perfect by any means, and with its share of clichés, but a good film nonetheless.

Columbus University is one of the finest in America. Into this place of higher learning comes a mix of students to join the already multicultural pot. Malik is a black track star who feels he is disadvantaged as he has to run and study, while others only have to run. Remy is a white teenager who is forced out of his dorm by his black roommate and finds friendship in an extreme group. Kristen is a young female who struggles to make friends and is assaulted by a man before falling in with a women's group. Their experiences intertwine in the small campus.

If anyone wonders why director John Singleton (he of Boyz n' the Hood) is now making things like 2Fast2Furious, this is as good a place to start looking as anywhere. After an assured start with Boyz, the director made a couple of films that had potential but just came out muddled or lacking something to make them work. Poetic Justice was one of them and this was another. Higher Learning had potential and you can see that it's heart is in the right place but it doesn't come off at all. The plot tries to be a mix of experiences but, because there are three or so characters up front, there is no time to develop them so their experiences are broad cultural brush strokes - the white kid sucked into extremism, the raped girl taken into lesbianism, the black man who has to work harder for everything.

As a result the plot never really engages and it all just goes where you expect it to go - and is less impacting as a result of it's plodding nature. This spills over into the characters too - they are all pretty much stereotypes that fit into their scenario rather than real characters. Singleton shows is bias in his direction and character selection. My wife said something about me watching a lot of `black' films in the past week and I said Higher Learning was not dominated by any one race - but I think I was wrong. Singleton clearly likes the characters played by Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube and Epps - they are cool and put upon where other characters (races) have fewer kind touches placed on them. Personally I thought every character had huge chips on their shoulders about their identity - but the African American characters are the only ones that are held up for praise in relation to their chips!

Having said that I did think Epps did OK - he made a lifeless character a little more interesting. Banks however is as one dimensional as I have grown to expect from her. Rapaport looks very young indeed but he does well. His character is lazily drawn and developed, but he manages to make him a little human - which took work looking at the film as a finished product. Swanson is too dippy and light - but then all the lesbian characters seem to be painted in a weird sort of light. Ice Cube and Busta Rhymes give extended cameos which require them to deliver their rap personas of thugz - they are laughably clichéd! Fishburne adds gravitas as he always does, but he has little to do and is given not only a poor accent, but also some `deep' dialogue that just sounds pretentious or like a fortune cookie.

Overall I saw what this film was trying to do but it didn't manage it. It was ambitious, but the wide spread meant that none of the plots or characters were allowed to develop and instead were left as hollow, broad stereotypes and scenarios. The film tries to go all deep and the final shot of the word `unlearn' against an American flag just feels like Singleton must have thought that he had been making incredibly profound points the whole time - instead it felt that his original idea had had a deeper point, but it was totally lost in delivery.

"The opposing groups are just too clearly defined and what we are left with is a comic strip or a caricature, even down to the pipe smoking professor".They even did a bad job on their stereotyping. Laurance Fishburn's accent sounded scottish when you just really anticipate an english accent to go with that pipe.

In one scene where the two parties have their first confrontation I just kept waiting for them to start laughing and it turn into a comedy. I had the hardest time believing these people were serious. They expect you to believe this is *really* how people live but you just dont see it cause you're blind.