Average Rating: 4.5/10
Reviews Counted: 33
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 25
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 4.3/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 10
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.8/5
User Ratings: 6,416
From director-writer Desmond Nakano comes this unusual role-reversal picture examining racism from a different perspective. Louis Pinnock (John Travolta) is a semi-literate worker in a chocolate candy factory. One day he makes a delivery to the mansion of wealthy Thaddeus Thomas (Harry Belafonte). He is noticed while he is unintentionally looking up at Thomas' wife, Megan (Margaret Avery), while she is undressing in an open window. Thomas makes sure that Pinnock is fired for this innocent
Dec 1, 1995 Wide
May 11, 1999
HBO Video
All Critics (37) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (8) | Rotten (25)
Were it not for John Travolta's big-hearted portrayal of an unemployed white factory worker driven to commit a desperate act, the movie would be an emotionally frozen exercise in cautious high-mindedness.
White Man's Burden spirals into tragedy but never into stirring drama. It stays stuck at the level of noble experiment.
Watching this movie is like watching Godfrey Cambridge's racial switcheroo in 1970's Watermelon Man -- without the laughs.
Surprisingly lively and entertaining.
A ham-fisted, under-imagined dialectic on race relations.
It's undeniably fascinating to watch this hypothetical experiment for a while. But White Man's Burden starts to feel like an only-passable Twilight Zone episode stretched into a full-length movie.
A wierd and ungainly mixture of obvious racial issues and pseudo-action material.
Doesn't go too far beyond the basic set-up.
The racial message is crystal clear and the concept of turning the tables on oppression is rather interesting. Unfortunately, the movie is never focused or convincingly solid to realize the cynicism in its meandering material. At best, "Burden" is merely
Manages to approach significant social issues, but falters in its melodrama.
Just when Travolta got his groove back..
A look at color relations that's likely to be more compelling for nonurban audiences than the latest take on drug dealing and gang banging in the 'hood.
Like the professional critics will tell you, VERY interesting premise, but the execution fell short
April 29, 2009Super Reviewer
Not the movie it could have been, but still thought provoking.
June 8, 2007Super Reviewer
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