ramsri007 This James Toback movie is about Hip Hop culture & the influence it has on the American Kids while growing up. The way Black & White panned out, it seems to me that the scrip was written extemporaneously. Many parts felt disjointed and just did not gel well with the overall story. Or was there a story? Toback touches on a lot of issues and topics but he failed to fit them well into the story and therefore the final feel of the movie is more documentary like. He tries a little too hard to be cutting edge.There are quite a few cameos in this movie - Mike Tyson, Brooke Sheilds, Joe Pantoliano, Jared Leto Robert Downey Jr. Had Toback worked more on the script and the screenplay, we would have had a great film about teens, race relations and cultural impact. Although I loathe the pace of the movie and the story, I would surely watch it just for Downey Jr. He plays a documentary film maker, Terry who along with his wife, Brooke Shields, follow a group of rich white kids who are desperate to match their black hip-hop heroes. The best moments in the movie belong to Downey Jr and his interactions with the characters. He hits on every guy in the movie including Mike Tyson! In the movie, a visibly nervous Downey sidles up to Tyson and mentions a dream he had about him that involved Tyson 'holding' him. At which moment Tyson, in pure rage, slaps Downey and grabs his throat. One can see the terror in Downey's eyes. This exchange is definitely electrifying and funny in a sense. Another moment is when Downey Jr confesses to his wife that he is gay towards the end of the movie & also his exchange with Jerad Leto at the club.

Alexander_seth2000 I am not sure what this movie was trying to portray, whether it was white kids wanting to act black, or life stories of black hip hop artists/basketball players living in new york. If it was trying to display both it made a total mess of it.No story in the film was shown in depth, out of the all star cast only Brooke shields, Robert Downey Jr and Mike Tyson shone. Nice to see Claudia Schieffer on screen, she can act but her part in this film is awful. I became bored from listening to one constant hip hop song after another as well as the black rapper actors speaking in an unintelligible language which made the film even more confusing then it was before. The only highlights of the film for me was Robert Downey Jr confessing to his wife he is gay at the end, and Mike Tyson giving advice to a young rapper (he doesn't just box!) Anyways in my opinion, terrible, but if you got time to waste then perhaps watch it.

paul2001sw-1 Hip-hop is not just a style of music, for it comes associated with an attitude, an attitude that notoriously does not wholly reject the ghetto from which it springs. Whether the music, and culture, should thus be seen as the free expression of the dispossessed, or as one of the chains tying them down, is this a moot point (though it's worth noting that every revolution in popular music over the last half-century has been seen by respectable society as the end of the world). 'Black and White' is a celebrity-studded collection of small stories about characters living the hip-hop life, its focus on the interplay of the white community with this essentially black form of music. It's not badly executed, although it's hard to get very interested in any of the characters. One peculiarity, though, is how little hip-hop there actually is on the soundtrack, a strange vacuum at the heart of the film; also, we see little in the way of everyday life in the world from which the music emerged. The result is watchable, but there are no real insights, sociological or musical, to be had.

teddyryan BLACK AND WHITE contains Mike Tyson playing himself, which is interesting since Mike Tyson as Mike Tyson advocates some interesting things in this film. Else than that, I found Bijou Philips irritating, the storyline poorly done, and Ray Allen's performance not exactly oscar worthy.