Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 13, 1995 TAG: 9501170040
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If the conclusion were as strong as the beginning, it might have been a masterpiece. As it is, writer-director John Singleton is over his disappointing sophomore slump (``Poetic Justice'') and tells a story that ought to be a hit with young audiences.
From the opening shot of an American flag filling the screen, it's obvious that Singleton is aiming high. He has serious things to say about sex, race and violence in this country. His setting is the fictional Columbus University, an academic microcosm of American youth.
The main characters are three newly arrived freshmen: Malik (Omar Epps), a track star on partial scholarship; Kristen (Kristy Swanson), an Orange County girl who finds herself in a financial crunch; and Remy (Michael Rappaport) whose Idaho upbringing hasn't prepared him for the pressures of campus life. All of them have a lot of ``Higher Learning'' to do.
For Kristen, there's date rape and possible attraction to a politically active lesbian (Jennifer Connelly). Remy falls in with a group of neo-Nazi skinheads who prey on his loneliness. Malik vacillates between a romance with another runner (Tyra Banks) and allegiance to a group of thuggish black students led by Ice Cube.
Above them all is the commanding presence of Prof. Phipps (Laurence Fishburne), a political science teacher whose no-nonsense message of conservative self-reliance is the film's strongest statement
. But it has little to do with the other conflicts: the self-segregation practiced by the students, the sexual tensions, the competing demands of academics and athletics. Singleton handles those issues with varying degrees of sensitivity. In some cases, his empathy with his characters - of all races - is so strong that their mistakes and frustrations are completely real. At other times, he tries to hammer his points home with a wrecking ball. The skinheads are such exaggerated caricatures that they don't really belong in the film. Otherwise, the ensemble acting is believable throughout, even when Singleton sets his characters up on soapboxes.
In the end, Singleton doesn't try to answer all the questions he raises, and that's fine. He wants people to think, to argue about this film; to question what he says and what they believe. He does become overtly manipulative in the last reel in a way that a more experienced filmmaker could have avoided. That is a more serious flaw, but by no means a fatal one.
The good so strongly outweighs the bad that ``Higher Learning'' is a strongly recommended.
Higher Learning ***
A Columbia release playing at the Valley View Mall 6. 124 min. Rated R for strong language, violence, strong sexual material.
by CNB