Early in Mike Binder’s half-baked Black or White, aging lawyer Elliot Anderson (Kevin Costner) is asked by his 5-year-old granddaughter Eloise (Jillian Estel) to comb her hair. Elliot and his wife Carol have raised Eloise since birth, but in the wake of Carol’s sudden death, the task has now fallen to him. And since Eloise is half-black, he’s a bit mystified. He starts to brush from the top and she scolds him, “No, start from the bottom!”—and he begins to tug. “Do we do this every day?” he groans.
This scene, bizarre in many ways (Elliot’s wife had literally died the night before and yet he was trying to approximate a normal day for his granddaughter), also struck me as promising. The issue of black hair looms large when it comes to white parents raising children of color. (Famously, Angelina Jolie was scolded for not properly caring for her adopted daughter Zahara’s hair. ) And since Black or White is a film about a custody battle, I assumed it would roll up its sleeves and deal with issues like this, quotidian moments that reflect larger cultural conflicts.
Well, no. Despite its title and one obnoxiously mansplainy speech about race that Elliot delivers in the courtroom, Black or White isn’t really an exploration of the larger issue of race and identity at all. It’s actually more about how many ways two families can screw up a custody battle. Seriously, several times I thought to myself: Get this child away from all of these crazy people!
On the face of it, Elliot seems like a good grandfather. He loves Eloise; calls her “puppy” (a personal ick, but you may feel otherwise); sends her to a prestigious private school; and even springs for a wildly overqualified math and language tutor (charming Mpho Koaho). But he’s also an alcoholic, who has been drunk in front of Eloise many times. (He at least has the presence of mind to hire a driver when he needs to take her to school.) Then there’s Eloise’s grandmother, Rowena Jeffers (Octavia Spencer), a self-made businesswoman, who lives in a house filled with members of her extended family—nephews, nieces, grandkids. The contrast between Elliot’s austere mansion—he has an Hispanic maid, who is nearly mute as far as I can tell, and that’s it—and Rowena’s lively, love-filled home is underscored, almost to a ridiculous degree (at one point, Elliot comes over to find Eloise jamming with the rest of the family in some sort of extemporaneous jug band). So the choice seems clear in a way, right? Much as we may like Elliot—Costner gives him a craggy, if befuddled, charm—Eloise would be better off with her grandmother, no? Except that’s not what Black or White is about either. Rowena’s son Reggie (Andre Holland)—Eloise’s father—comes back to town, claiming to be off drugs and, although he’s suspiciously sweaty and twitchy and has zero plan for his life, Rowena inexplicably decides that he’s the one who should sue for custody, not her. Suddenly, we have a custody battle between a drunk and a crackhead. Good times.
I mean. . . what exactly is Binder driving at here? Black or White announces proudly at the start that it’s based on a true story, and perhaps Binder was enamored with the idea of a 60ish white guy suing for custody of his biracial granddaughter (does he somehow think that makes Elliot noble?). But it’s not Elliot’s whiteness that makes him a possibly unsuitable father figure for her. It’s the fact that he’s an alcoholic. Indeed, the racial dynamics are mostly beside the point. (A scene where Elliot uses the “N-word” is essentially a setup for the aforementioned horrible speech, which comes dangerously close to “I’ll stop using that word if they do.” Double ick.)
Black or White isn’t a complete disaster. I actually loved the dynamic between Rowena and an appealingly sensible black female judge (Paula Newsome), who admires the spunky Rowena but also finds her a little exhausting. It was also nice to see Costner attempting a role that required some acting chops (he’s a convincing drunk). But the film’s uneven tone (it’s a—shudder—”dramedy”) doesn’t help his cause. It’s hard to sink your teeth into a role that seems reluctant to ever dig beneath the surface. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good analogy for the entire film.