fricka freedom writer

Bellingham's favorite daughter, Hilary "The Next Karate Kid" Swank, is going to be stinking up the silver screens in a minute with her latest foray into overdramatic acting, "Freedom Writers," an MTV film about a White teacher bringing a ray of hope into the lives of a group of n'er-do-well urban youths. This film, of course, is being released during the apex of Oscar buzz.

Michelle Pfieffer must be pretty pissed right now.

Personally, I don't think this film could generate any type of Oscar buzz, save a green muppet on a public television show ridiculing it; in fact, I'd be surprised if it even does relatively well at the box office. I don't know how many more of these "White Shadow" flicks we have to sit through before we just start shooting ourselves in our collective feet. The whole genre smells of a rotting dead corpse, not unlike the Black/White buddy-cop movie staple. On top of this generic mess, it's an MTV film for God's sake. How many good MTV movies have there been? One, probably [1]. "The Perfect Score," which wasn't that great to begin with. Their line of stinkers, however, is pretty impressive: "Joe's Apartment," "Varsity Blues," "Coach Carter," "Save the Last Dance," "Crossroads," "Orange County," the list goes on.

As far as these kinds of movies go, Jon Lovitz made the king of all of them back in the late-90's. Everybody else is just clown shoes.

[1] I realize that "Better Luck Tomorrow," one of the best movies of all time, was released by MTV, but technically, MTV only dumped money into its release and promotion. The film was long completed before they sunk their fangs into it.