The bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955; or more exactly, a microscopic fragment of it: "Fifty thousand boycotted the buses in Montgomery. I knew one. Odessa Carter." For a while the movie pursues the plan of attack of another race-relations movie in another area of the globe in another era of history, "A World Apart", giving us a child's-eye view of events -- a white child's view -- so that the social upheaval doesn't overwhelm other important matters like finding out the truth about Santa Claus. But this point of view proves quickly to be too restrictive; and the movie, repenting of its original plan of attack, starts to lose track of the child altogether as the focus shifts to the mother, to her gradual radicalization into a volunteer car-pool driver, and to the legitimate and unforced link-up of black rights and women's rights in the paternalistic South. It's a strange and a mundane and an easy-to-follow path to social enlightenment: the lady wants her house cleaned, and she doesn't want to have to do it herself for heaven's sake, and this boycott thing is making her maid awfully late to work and awfully dead on her feet when she gets there. Hmm. A big ending of mob violence and inspirational response gives the movie the size of ending that movies, or anyway bigger movies than this one, are felt to require. It doesn't do this movie any good. Whoopi Goldberg, Sissy Spacek; directed by Richard Pearce. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.