GET ON THE BUS (56)

Directed by: Spike Lee

Starring: Charles S. Dutton, Andre Braugher, Ossie Davis

The Pitch: A busload of black men travel across America to the 1995 Million Man March in Washington D.C.

Theo Sez: Boisterous, uplifting and intelligent, but - to a non-American - the whole idea rings hollow : its robust debate of Important Issues has drawn comparisons to the likes of TWELVE ANGRY MEN, but those old message-movies tackled philosophical questions (Justice in MEN, racism and evolution in assorted Stanley Kramer movies) whereas this seems to be debating yesterday's headlines (absentee fathers, inner-city violence) - it's like a magazine to their hardbacks. It's hard to imagine it'll have much relevance thirty years from now - indeed, with its (too) many O.J. references and extended riffs on Louis Farrakhan and the Million Man March, it already feels like something of a museum-piece. Above all, its ghettoism is what limits it - everything about it stems from the notion of blackness as incontrovertibly unique and separate : it goes on endlessly about black men this and black men that, all the prejudice they face in a racist world - which prompts the (possibly naive) response that, if films like this didn't make such a big deal about skin colour, the situation might actually be a lot better. Oddly enough, within those limits it's among this director's least limited, most generous movies - taking on a wide range of issues, receptive to (almost) all points of view and, stylistically, able to get beyond the monotony of its enclosed setting through film-stock juggling and exuberant musical interludes. Lee remains a dazzling film-maker ; but, even before the long, finger-wagging speech that climaxes it, this is just preaching to the converted.