19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly a classic video for all ages, January 6, 2003
This review is from: The Color of Friendship [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Due to an overpresence of saccharine to non-existent scripting and plots, I tend to shy away from Disney's live action offerings. Even though they supposedly market to all ages, I never saw anything memorable...until this release.
Familiarity with former Representative Ronald V. Dellums (D CA)'s politics convinced me to give this dramatization a chance. Even if it employed some of the traditional scripting elements I despised in many youth videos, I would also be able to see anti-apartheid work of some kind.
The story centers around the learning experience his daughter Piper and a white South African exchange student named Mahree have when they (especially the lattter, who has to learn blacks are not placed on the earth to serve her) meet and learn each other are more alike and dissimillar.
Also inspiring is Mahree's implicit promise to take up anti-apartheid work upon returning to South Africa, given the likely loss of her own privlleged position this would entail. As an anti-racist white, I did not intially like the self-centered behavior exhibited by the earlier Mahree and found her change of conciousness much more enjoyable.
While this film (like many of Disney's offerings) is geared towards youth, I have personally watched this film several times and can readily attest anybody regardless of age will enjoy this video.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Disney-fied" Tale of Two Schoolgirls, February 15, 2005
This review is from: The Color of Friendship [VHS] (VHS Tape)
"The Color of Friendship" is based on the real-life story of the family of Congressman Ronald V.Dellums and their struggle to help end apartheid in South Africa in 1977.
As Dellums, Carl Lumbly gives a strong and sensitive performance as a politician suddenly faced with the challenge of reshaping the attitudes of a white South African exchange student whose father is a policeman who has expressed his delight at the recent arrest of activist Stephen Biko before sending his daughter to America. As young exchange student, Mahree Bok, Lindsey Haun alternately displays arrogance, humility, and sensitivity as she comes to see the world in a different way.
As Representative Dellums' wife, Roscoe and daughter, Piper, Penny Johnson and Shadia Simmons must deal with the initial shock of receiving a white student into their home when they had initially expected her to be black, and guide a reluctant Mahree through her initial shock of seeing blacks in prominent positions.
Gradually, Piper and Mahree form a close bond, but world events, which I myself vaguely remember begin to take precedence over the girls' friendship, when Stephen Biko is killed by the South African police and Mahree forced to leave the Dellums' home to stay in the South African Embassy until she can be returned to her homeland.
A despairing Piper calls her father at work to report the incident, Dellums and an entourage have a chat with the South African Ambassador, and Mahree is returned to her host family.
Shortly thereafter, a heated confrontation between Piper and Mahree gives the latter a rude awakening to the fact that a powerful thing called the Court of World Opinion is against the killing of Stephen Biko and the government her own father represents. Tearfully, Mahree acknowleges this, as well as the fact that she has no control over the events in her country.
The girls soon reconcile before Mahree goes home. But according to a reviewer on Amazon's affiliate site, imdb.com, the film's "Disneyfied" ending belies the tragic truth about what really happened to young Mahree: Upon her return home, the 16-year-old reportedly met the same fate as Stephen Biko--being taken into custody, interrogated about the Dellums, tortured and beaten to death by the South African Police--her father's own colleagues.
If this is true, it doesn't surprise me; [...]
If Mahree's tragic end is factual, she must then be eulogized as a young girl who learned to see the light of racial harmony a few years before many of her fellow white South Africans, and Dellum's successful efforts to dismantle apartheid are a memorial to her as much as to the many non-whites who suffered under it.
I have withheld from giving this film all five stars because I question its historical accuracy. But the Dellums family is to be commended for lending assistance to the making of this film, and can be forgiven if they chose to skirt over the painful truth.
Since I learned that story, this movie has been difficult to watch, but it is an important film for the young to see, even if it spares them an ultimate reality that is too unfathomable for many.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why doesn't Disney release this movie on DVD?, November 30, 2004
This review is from: The Color of Friendship [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This is a wonderful, touching movie. The actress Lindsey Haun puts in an awesome performance as Mahree Bok.
Why doesn't Disney release this movie on DVD?
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