This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Upwardly Mobile
Plot Overview
A white driver Mike Renfro (Joseph Skora) with a black passenger Scott Russell (Michael Ealy) are speeding through San Francisco trying not to be late for an anticipated “surprise.” Hip hop music is being played as they boogie along. Are they going to a drug meet? No, they're heading to upscale Sanders & Reddick where Creative Marketer Scott receives a top salesman award after having closed a critical deal. This allows him to suggest to his wife Annie (Meagan Good) that they go up to Napa Valley to check out the manor Foxglove that's up for sale. At $3.5 million it's been out of their range.
The white owner Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid)—he's a hunter who just killed “Bambi”—takes a shine to them and knocks $200K off the price. As Annie has her heart set on it, they close the deal. “If mama ain't happy, nobody's happy,” Charlie observes. They remove all guns from their new house. When Scott was twelve, his brother was gunned down in the street, which put Scott off on guns. It was probably drug related—he knew the (poisonous) herb foxglove after which the house was named—, which would explain how Scott came up with the seed money for the house. He made it clear he wasn't going to do any fix-it-up work on it, so we figure he also found some kind of easy way into a white collar job, not being into hard labor as such.
Annie, however, is a colored girl who came from a small town in Indiana (“I'm a country girl at heart.”) She's used to getting her hands dirty and doesn't mind the required work. She also keeps Scott on a tight leash so he doesn't stray (again) with women, and she monitors his drinking so he's not busted for drunk driving. This small town girl is into bad boys and evidently was the rescuer of Scott from ghetto life. Scott still wields a bat going after youthful trespassers, looking like he was once a feared enforcer.
Charlie after he sold his
house returns to mow the lawn. He's invited for Thanksgiving
and then he drops by to help Annie hang the Christmas lights. Annie
exhibits small town hospitality, while Scott is big city suspicious
to the extent of having Brian (Lee Shorten) in IT screen Charlie for him. They find that Charlie
is in legal and financial difficulties, putting him in the market for a
good girl like Annie to rescue another bad boy. As the tension builds we
wonder if Scott will maintain his cool with guns or will his ghetto
background emerge to wield a weapon—in the country there are
always guns around—to administer street justice against the intruder.
Ideology
Annie photographs well except for the frontal shot with a death's-head toothy grin at the “surprise” party. There she is grotesque, which puts one in mind of a Halloween mask. We suppose the director knew what he was doing, and as the plot develops to touch on Thanksgiving and then Christmas, we want to pull back and look for a commonality. The house backs up to a nature preserve. Noah had a nature preserve in his ark, and in the movie we see “Bambi” and on a nature program, a lion and a zebra. Hey, all aboard! Napa is designated as a “wine growing region,” and we see the bottle get passed around.
After the Flood there was an incident, Gen. 9:20-22, where Noah got drunk on wine and was exposed in all his glory to his son Ham who brazenly viewed him so. Noah's other two sons, Shem and Japheth, covered him up, Gen. 9:23. Ham had violated him in some way, Gen. 9:24. Noah's curse puts Ham's youngest son Canaan in a position of servitude, Gen. 9:25. Noah's other two sons Shem, Gen. 9:26, and Japheth, Gen. 9:27, were blessed by Noah. Canaan in Ham's line was probably singled out for mention because of the Canaanites' later dealings with the Semitic Israelites. More germane to modern times is perhaps the lineage of Cush. Cush was also a son of Ham (Gen. 10:6), settling in Africa. Cush is Hebrew meaning black. Researcher Bodie Hodge confirms that “As a general trend, Ham is the father of many peoples in Africa” (122). Dr. Ide adds, “Ham sired four sons: Cush (translates as ‘black’) … and Canaan the youngest” (62).
Noah had blessed his first two sons for respectfully covering him up, but he'd cursed the third, Ham, through Ham's youngest son Canaan, Gen. 9:26-27; Ham's descendants are to be slaves to the descendants of Noah's other two sons. Ham's youngest son Canaan is the noted recipient of the punishment. The Canaanites were due for destruction when the Israelites invaded the promised land, but the Gibeonite branch did a deal with Joshua. They'd heard what happened to other Canaanite tribes, so they sent ambassadors dressed as if they'd come from a long journey (Joshua 9:3-6) and persuaded Joshua to make a league with these distant cousins. When it was discovered they'd tricked Joshua into sparing them the destruction to be visited on the Canaanites in the land, (Joshua 9:24-27) Joshua spared their lives but made them bondmen, which was better than dead.
With some artistic license, we enact that scheme when trick-or-treating on Halloween. Our children in disguise visit houses, and if the householders make a league with them by giving them treats, they avoid the war, the tricks. On Thanksgiving our selection of American traditional holiday fare (i.e., turkey, corn, sweet potatoes & cranberries) dates back to the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving with the Indians where descendants of Shem and Japheth shared a feast. These two lines were to be integrated, i.e. Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem. In our movie the families shared pumpkin and apple pies, perhaps some venison, and all the trimmings. Noah sorted out his gifts according to his naughty and nice lists, Gen. 9:24-27. Shem and his brother Japheth were a nice pair as were Ham and his son Canaan a naughty pair. The blessings come down through the generations by means of what we call the Christmas spirit, as relates to Jesus of Nazareth a Semite descendent of Shem.
If we take the wall tapestry at Foxglove house to represent the old way of ordering society, the various ethnic groups integrated into an American melting pot, with Negroes in a separate servant category, then the new tapestry that Scott substitutes, more to his liking, would be a general equality including his race. This new integration is in our movie represented at a lunch counter by a swirly ice cream mixing chocolate and vanilla, on TV by the zebra sporting black and white stripes, and by Scott and Annie's best friends Mike and Rachel (Alvina August) being a mixed race couple.
Under this new scheme, Scott and Annie end up in the catbird seat rather than stuck in some slum ghetto (“We get the house; we get the kids; we get the whole thing.”) The downside is, (Prov. 30:21-22) “The earth is disquieted, and … it cannot bear: For a servant when he reigneth.” Mike's cigarette butt tossed into the garden disquiets the scene, and then it becomes unbearable when there's no place to dispose of his body. Integration seems grotesque when Charlie dwells with the black couple (“He's been living under the house”), but at least there's no racism anywhere in the movie.
Production Values
“” (2019) was directed by Deon Taylor. It was written by David Loughery. It stars Dennis Quaid, Meagan Good, and Michael Ealy. Quaid expanded his range by playing a suitably creepy psychopath. Ealy and Good were a compelling young couple. The remaining parts fit in well.
MPAA rated it PG–13 for terror, violence, some language, sexuality, and thematic elements. It was filmed at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It had an abrasive musical score by Geoff Zanelli.
Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation
Holidays were represented but they weren't all happy ones. I went to college in Ohio, one state over from where movie Annie was from. It had its share of race discrimination, or at least it was protested vigorously in the 1960s. One can imagine Annie's family moving to get away from it, but they found themselves wanting more segregation, i.e. for Charlie to split. That's pretty weird, but then it was a movie and that's allowed. It was suitably horrific.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action scenes. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.
Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homophobia and Heterosexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org