The first 2/3 of this movie is so real and so subtle (OK, so Whoopi looks 30 years older than her girlfriends in the early scenes). It is the story of the American dream for Tom (Danny Glover) an African- American man gone awry. We learn that he was badly scarred during his youth in Tennessee for beating a white boy in a state spelling bee and coming within an eyelash of being lynched as a consequence. He meets and marries Mabel (Whoopi) even though her father doesn't care for him, gets his law degree, and moves to the mixed lower-middle-class New Haven Suburb of Hamden, CT. When we come in, Tom is struggling to get noticed in his law firm when he attracts fame and his career catapults upwards through his defense of a notorious local doctor accused of nefarious crimes.
So, we move on up to Greenwich where the family integrates the neighborhood and we watch son Tom-Too and daughter Stormy grow up while Tom continues to climb the ladder of success and gets appointed to the Superior Court where he derives special satisfaction from giving his heaviest sentences to African-American offenders. Meanwhile, Mabel tries very hard to follow Tom's advice to become in with the neighbors and gradually changes herself without realizing it by distancing herself from her maid who had been her friend and winds up having little in common with her friends and family back in Hamden. Both children see these changes but react in opposite ways with Tom-Too determined to success but not losing touch with his roots while Stormy tries to become every white man's fantasy.
As we get toward the climax is where I start to get lost. This is why I must use spoilers which I almost never do. Monique plays, extremely well as usual, a Southern African-American who wins the Lotto and moves to Greenwich, having frequent family visits and parties with the very "low-class, chicken-neck eating "N's" that Tom has worked his whole life to distance himself from. Mabel obeys his commands to keep her distance from Monique. But, when Monique tries to buy the house on the other side of them, where her neighbor was killed by her abusive husband, something Mabel wanted to alert the police to, but followed Tom's command to ignore, Tom orders Mabel to use subterfuge to delay/subvert the purchase and Mabel anesthetizes herself with a combination of pills and booze and passes house. Tom, seeing this, takes matters into his own hands and burns the empty house down.
This is where the film, to me, seems to decide to change course rather than playing out its hand. After the arson, Tom lays down next to his fallen wife, face down on the bed, and goes into a trance-like sleep remembering his near-lynching. Instead of dying from an O/D which is what I was expecting this "American-Dream-gone-very-wrong" tale to do next, Mabel (now acting more like the real Whoopi persona we know) wakes up and takes charge, facilitating Tom-too to do what is calling to him (going to Morehouse College in lieu of Princeton), deciding some good honest housework is what she needs to start reclaiming her own soul, and making great friends with neighbor Monique. What happened to Tom remains rather a mystery to me. Mostly, he is in pajamas and oblivious in some sort of trance the rest of the movie once he agrees to sign Tom- Too's permission forms. The police have written off the arson as some sort of teenage initiation so that threat is gone. But, it is unclear whether Tom is still a judge, whether he's had the same type of change of heart as his wife, or whether he can function professionally at all. It was certainly a happier resolution than I was expecting. The two children are off doing their own thing and while we're not sure Stomrny's will end up well, that is not explored. And Whoopi is redeeming herself and will be a very different neighbor than the token friend their neighbor's had before. I generally like happy endings but this one just didn't quite ring true. I would like more told to me than to try to infer what was happening to Tom. We had been brought so far into his psyche before - and then he's just marginalized. That would be okay with me if it was explained.
All said, I obviously found the whole thing absorbing enough and provocative enough to write a semi-novel about. Please see it yourself and if you have your own thoughts on the ending you wish to share,please e-mail me at herb.blank@gmail.com
So, we move on up to Greenwich where the family integrates the neighborhood and we watch son Tom-Too and daughter Stormy grow up while Tom continues to climb the ladder of success and gets appointed to the Superior Court where he derives special satisfaction from giving his heaviest sentences to African-American offenders. Meanwhile, Mabel tries very hard to follow Tom's advice to become in with the neighbors and gradually changes herself without realizing it by distancing herself from her maid who had been her friend and winds up having little in common with her friends and family back in Hamden. Both children see these changes but react in opposite ways with Tom-Too determined to success but not losing touch with his roots while Stormy tries to become every white man's fantasy.
As we get toward the climax is where I start to get lost. This is why I must use spoilers which I almost never do. Monique plays, extremely well as usual, a Southern African-American who wins the Lotto and moves to Greenwich, having frequent family visits and parties with the very "low-class, chicken-neck eating "N's" that Tom has worked his whole life to distance himself from. Mabel obeys his commands to keep her distance from Monique. But, when Monique tries to buy the house on the other side of them, where her neighbor was killed by her abusive husband, something Mabel wanted to alert the police to, but followed Tom's command to ignore, Tom orders Mabel to use subterfuge to delay/subvert the purchase and Mabel anesthetizes herself with a combination of pills and booze and passes house. Tom, seeing this, takes matters into his own hands and burns the empty house down.
This is where the film, to me, seems to decide to change course rather than playing out its hand. After the arson, Tom lays down next to his fallen wife, face down on the bed, and goes into a trance-like sleep remembering his near-lynching. Instead of dying from an O/D which is what I was expecting this "American-Dream-gone-very-wrong" tale to do next, Mabel (now acting more like the real Whoopi persona we know) wakes up and takes charge, facilitating Tom-too to do what is calling to him (going to Morehouse College in lieu of Princeton), deciding some good honest housework is what she needs to start reclaiming her own soul, and making great friends with neighbor Monique. What happened to Tom remains rather a mystery to me. Mostly, he is in pajamas and oblivious in some sort of trance the rest of the movie once he agrees to sign Tom- Too's permission forms. The police have written off the arson as some sort of teenage initiation so that threat is gone. But, it is unclear whether Tom is still a judge, whether he's had the same type of change of heart as his wife, or whether he can function professionally at all. It was certainly a happier resolution than I was expecting. The two children are off doing their own thing and while we're not sure Stomrny's will end up well, that is not explored. And Whoopi is redeeming herself and will be a very different neighbor than the token friend their neighbor's had before. I generally like happy endings but this one just didn't quite ring true. I would like more told to me than to try to infer what was happening to Tom. We had been brought so far into his psyche before - and then he's just marginalized. That would be okay with me if it was explained.
All said, I obviously found the whole thing absorbing enough and provocative enough to write a semi-novel about. Please see it yourself and if you have your own thoughts on the ending you wish to share,please e-mail me at herb.blank@gmail.com