Black & White (1999)

IMDb plot summary: A group of white high school teens become involved with Harlem's black hip-hop crowd.

Directed by James Toback. Starring Ben Stiller, Allan Houston, and Claudia Schiffer.

Black & White follows a group of white teenagers obsessed with Black hip-hop culture, an athlete being offered the chance to fix a game, and a filmmaker documenting the whole thing. This is a weird mess of a movie, without a coherent throughline or interesting characters. They all seem kind of randomly thrown together without a purpose for any of it. Just when I think one character is being set up as the primary arc of the story, it zigzags and abandons them. Done well, that could make this an interesting ensemble piece, but none of these pieces work individually, much less as a whole. The acting in this isn't good, even from seasoned actors, the writing is pretentious and silly, the wobbly camera gets old real fast... It just doesn't work at all, and I found very to like about it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Black & White < The Invention of Lying

Black & White < Avengers: Endgame

Black & White < Annie (1982)

Black & White < The Cowboys

Black & White > God's Not Dead

Black & White > The Wedding Date

Black & White > Paradise Island

Black & White > Agent Cody Banks

Black & White < Baby Take a Bow

Black & White > Captain Thunder

Black & White < Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Black & White < Martyrs

Final spot: #3660 out of 3892, or 6%.