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The Great Debaters

Directed by Denzel Washington

Written by Robert Eisele

Starring Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Denzel Whitaker

Classification: PG

**

Given the dearth of movies about American black intellectual history, you can't help hoping for something historically corrective from The Great Debaters. The movie was inspired by the true, Depression-era story of the all-black championship debating team from Wiley College, Tex., coached by professor and poet Melvin B. Tolson, which participated in a series of historic debates with white colleges.

Produced by Oprah Winfrey and directed by Denzel Washington, who also stars as Tolson, The Great Debaters is competently directed, well-acted, typical inspirational hokum. Washington first appears breaking up a razor fight at a house party, and then, the next day in the classroom, standing on a chair to declaim a Langston Hughes poem to his class.

With his aggressive questioning style and pipe-sucking superiority, Tolson seems intended to embody the intellectual tough love these students need. As we learn in the debate-team tryouts, he is most impressed by students who have memorized large portions of Bartlett's Quotations and who can endure his baiting.

Though Washington is the star, much of the focus of the story is on chubby 14-year-old undergraduate (and future civil-rights leader) James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) who is struggling with his intimidating father, Wiley's president (a typically excellent if underused Forest Whitaker, no relation to the younger actor). James serves as the witness to the debating prowess and blossoming romance between older teammates, the cocky Henry Lowe (Nate Parker) and spirited Samantha (Jurnee Smollett), on whom James also has a crush.

One night, James follows Tolson when the professor sneaks off campus, dons a straw hat and overalls, and moonlights to organize tenant farmers. The subplot about the professor's union activities is something of a narrative dead-end, but does add to the story's historic context. Wiley College's successes emerged during the Jim Crow, union-busting South of the thirties. In one night scene, the students are driving back from a debate when they come upon the swinging body of a black man who has just been lynched by a white mob. The racism, too, becomes encapsulated in cliché, with actor Eric Kelly McFarland as the stereotypical, fat white sheriff.

Most of the real story is considerably fictionalized. Characters are composites and, though it serves as the movie's dramatic climax, there is no evidence, for example, that Wiley ever debated Harvard. Perhaps most disappointing is the distortion of the actual debates, in which the victory is determined not by good arguments, but by emotional appeal. Samantha, for example, clinches a win on the proposition that welfare is a disincentive to work, by citing the look in the eyes of the mother of a hungry child. Throughout, Robert Eisele's script undercuts the Wiley team's supposed skill by stacking the dice in their favour: They are only shown defending the most moral, liberal and progressive positions.

“Debate is blood sport,” Tolson tells students auditioning for his team. Sure enough, The Great Debaters follows the template of an underdog sports movie ( not that different from last year's football film We Are Marshall).

There's the collection of individuals who learn to band together, there's the selfish star player who learns generosity, the second banana who stars in the big game and confounds the team's privileged rivals.

All of this unfolds with such predictability, the title might as well be The Great Foregone Conclusion.

The Great Debaters opens across Canada tomorrow.