Black or White

Kevin Costner plays a widower fighting for the custody of his black granddaughter (Jillian Estell) in this dopey, misguided and frequently offensive movie. Costner gets to be drunk for most of the movie, and it's unintentionally funny. He and the rest of the cast are forced to play stereotypes in what adds up to a big pile of embarrassing nothing. It sometimes flirts with meaningfulness, but it degenerates into your typical courtroom drama where a bunch of jerks fight for the right to raise a precocious child. The whole thing feels dishonest, even straining for laughter in extremely inappropriate ways. Costner stumbles around, Octavia Spencer shakes her head a lot, and we face palm ourselves for over two hours. By the time the Costner character's dead wife's ghost goes for a late night swim, the film has become a complete disaster. It's surprising to me that anything like this makes it past direct-to-video and actually hits movie screens. The film is as simple-minded as its title.