MOVIE REVIEW : ‘White Girl’ a Condescending Morality Play

When first-time film director Tony Brown submitted “The White Girl” to the movie industry ratings board nearly two years ago, he was shocked to have the film returned to him with an R slapped on it. After all, it was an anti-drug film with no strong language, no nudity and violence that was almost too tame for TV.

Brown, a Howard University professor who hosts his own PBS TV show, made the film independently for $2 million and was relying on fund-raising premieres to recoup his investment. An R rating would have made bookings with sensitive community groups tough.

Brown won his appeal of the rating and “The White Girl” went out with a PG-13 brand and enjoyed a long and fruitful run on the road. Now, it is being released commercially, where it will prove to paying customers that a bad movie’s just a bad movie, whatever its rating.

“The White Girl” is a morality play about a beautiful middle-class black student (Troy Beyer) who, because of parental pressure to succeed among whites, falls prey to the coke culture at a Southern college. Part sermon, part warning label, it’s the sort of inspirational hokum that used to follow church services on Sunday-morning TV--except those were more skillfully made.

In this condescending sudser, Kim Barnes (Beyer) is a black student whose parents’ greatest fear is that she’ll fall in love with a black man. They encourage her to take drugs in moderation, presumably to help her fit in with her new upscale white friends, and she barely gets to midterms before her go-along, get-along black roommate Vanessa (Teresa Farley) has her whiffing cocaine by the gram.

“The White Girl,” which is slang for the seductive powder, turns into a tug-of-war for Kim’s salvation, with Vanessa and her straight-from-hell druggie friends pulling one way and Kim’s caring counselor and devastated boyfriend pulling another.

However things turn out for her, it’s pretty clear early on that the movie will not be saved.