Based on a celebrated, award-winning 1999 play by Rebecca Gilman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Doug Achison (Akeelah and the Bee), Spinning into Butter tells the story of how the cloistered, mostly white, fictional Belmont College in Vermont reacts when several hate crimes are directed at an African American student there.
Granted, this material is not the usual stuff of commercially-minded films. But the fact the movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival nearly two years ago – and only now is getting a very limited American release – may be a tipoff it’s not worth your time.
Parker in Anti-Sex and the City Role
Parker plays Sarah Daniels in a role as far removed from Sex and the City as humanly possible. You can imagine her reading the script, tossing it aside and proclaiming: “This’ll show ‘em I’m not just Carrie Bradshaw.” She proves that all right, in a role that, as written, is problematic and often downright annoying.
As the timid, frightened-of-her-own-shadow dean of students, poor Miss Parker comes off mostly as an insipid, politically-correct lump of vanilla tapioca. Is there any character in the film that she doesn’t cower before?
The only time Parker’s character comes alive is in one bravura scene in which she reveals that – a ha! – she is a closet racist after all.
Miranda Richardson, Beau Bridges Wasted in Film
The other big names are equally undercut by the script. As a martinet administrator, the great Miranda Richardson is so one-note that you cringe every time she shows up. And the always reliable Beau Bridges has no place to go as another college administrator who boasts of his days in the civil rights movement but who has lost touch with the black students he ostensibly identifies with.
There are so many holes in the story that you’d think the movie was shot at a dairy in Switzerland.
For example: why is Simon Brick (played by Paul James) the only black student being harassed? Especially since there’s a sizable student population of African Americans and other people of color?
No one ever sees the culprit, and Simon is preternaturally shy – but steadfastly refuses to accept a transfer to another dorm room. And why is Simon – the focus of the story – so absent from most of the movie? Gosh, what could it all mean?
It’s a dead giveaway, really, undercutting the premise. File this one under “D” for Duh.
Mykelti Williamson Co-Stars
And why does TV reporter Aaron Carmichael (played very effectively by Mykelti Williamson, of Forrest Gump fame) show up without a camera crew on his first visit to campus? Even (and especially) in small TV markets, stations can’t afford to send reporters around just to “check out” possible stories. In markets big and small, there’s neither time nor money for on-air talent to nose around without shooting a story for air.
You don’t have to be a TV pro to realize how patently absurd this is, and how it seriously damages the film’s credibility.
There’s more. Why, in a blue collar bar in a lily-white town, does no one object to a black man (Williamson) and a white woman (Parker) slow-dancing together when racist events are popping up on the local college campus?
Interracial Romance Avoided
The movie seems to toy with the idea of getting these two together in a romance – then backs away, as if it’s too much for the audience and the fictional town to handle. An interracial romance in the midst of the campus hate crimes might have given the story the kind of juice it sorely lacks.
First time director Mark Brokaw’s work is plodding. Most of the performances are flat, and he has somehow managed to retain the staginess of the material, despite shooting at real college campuses (Brooklyn College and Drew University) to help him “open up” the play.
The film opens Mar. 27 on single screens in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Boston. It opens a week later on single screens in Houston and Dallas.
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