MOVIES: QUIRKY CRISES : ‘Soul Man’: Not Even Good Intentions Make This One Bearable

If good intentions were enough, Prohibition would still be the law of the land, we’d still be getting our swine-flu shots and “Soul Man” (citywide) would be a bearable movie.

But they’re not, and it’s not.

“Soul Man” concerns an unexpectedly impoverished white college student who “becomes” black to qualify for a minority scholarship at Harvard Law School. Material this risky has to be done brilliantly or not at all. “Tootsie” pulled off its gender switch because of its compassion for the discoveries that a man made in a woman’s role. “Blazing Saddles” used blazing wit to attack the myths of racism, at full throttle.

Though it may have had honest intentions, “Soul Man” is a mess, at almost every level. Steve Miner’s direction stabs at farce, misses; makes a desperate dive at comedy, misses, and settles for sitcom sentimentality. Carol Black, the screenwriter, has a quick, good ear when she’s skewering trendy yuppies, but the rest of her satire is mortifyingly callow. And what is set into motion has neither wit nor compassion.

Briefly: C. Thomas Howell and college roommate Arye Gross have been accepted at Harvard Law School, when Howell’s rich and flaky dad, on the advice of his therapist, pulls the financial rug out from under his son to make him a man.

After exhausting every financial possibility, Howell discovers one full law school scholarship--for a qualified black student from the Los Angeles area. There are, oddly enough, no black students in Los Angeles who qualify. So, a quick pass at a friend’s “experimental tanning pills,” a visit to what must have been the worst wig shop in Los Angeles and his best friend doesn’t recognize him. We recognize him. C. Thomas Howell. Mantanned, in a stupid Dynel wig, he looks like a black Ken doll. But his roommate has to be let in on the secret.

Once safe inside this disguise, Howell is ready to walk a mile in someone else’s Bass-Weejuns, and to enter the second half of the movie which is a paint-by-numbers version of “The Paper Chase” at farce tempo, with James Earl Jones rumbling away in the John Houseman role.

In addition to not noticing that Jones’ dialogue makes him one of the film’s bigger bigots, the film makers also fail to understand that something with the exquisite danger of farce must be done thunderously and unabashedly. “Soul Man” is tinny and wimpy, insulting to at least two races and snaps whatever good will we might bring to it by the clumsiness--not to mention offensiveness--of its premise: that by putting on a farcical disguise you can experience what it means to be black.

The other basic rule for farce is that it must have believable underpinnings. The entire cast seem like fools and we like idiots when Howell’s rinky-dink disguise not only fools Rae Dawn Chong and Jones, who presumably know better, but also Howell’s parents. Being moneyed Southern Californians, they, of course, scream at the sight of a young black man in their son’s college rooms and prepare to defend themselves.

The women in the film fare very little better. Chong plays his brilliant black classmate, struggling at several jobs to keep herself at school. To complete her stereotype, she is a single parent with an adorable young son to rear. Melora Hardin is a randy white liberal who wants Howell for his sexual prowess and his hundred years of oppression. On paper, this may actually have been one of the film’s genuinely funny ideas. As directed, she’s a sex-crazed bimbo.

In the service of its comedy, the film trots out the full litany of racist cliches: Looking at the black Howell at a dinner party, one Boston Brahmin sees him as Prince, another as a jiving dude, the third as a hot-blooded stud. That seems to use up the repertoire of possibilities. Presumably, by airing these dumb stereotypes, they could be laid to rest. “Soul Man,” consciously or not, reinforces them just by trotting them out one more weary time.

The majority of the performers look uncomfortable at being asked to take this seriously. Chong even seems to be physically removing herself from scenes while she’s in them. A few of the actors are frankly terrible; one, sonorously so. Gross is a pleasant discovery, second-banana style.

And finally, what does Howell learn? That police treat a black man differently from a white one. That racist jokes are defamatory and unfunny. And that the difference between his “black” experience and a black man’s is that if he didn’t like it, Howell could always get out. For this he had to go to Harvard, and we had to go to “Soul Boy”?