When I was watching The Color Of Friendship the only question I had was how a film like this was made at the Disney Studio. The answer is that it wasn't though it was distributed and exhibited by the folks at the Magic Kingdom. It's a film of rare insight and social significance, unlike the usual stuff you get from Disney.
In 1977 Congressman Ron Dellums through an incredible bit of bureaucratic snafuing got to host an African child as part of an exchange program. But our color blind applications don't take into account that he could and did wind up with a young girl from the apartheid Union Of South Africa. Her arrival proves to be a learning experience all around except sadly for her South African peers.
The Color Of Friendship works as well as it does because of the casting and chemistry of Shadia Simmons as Pieper Dellums and Lindsey Haun as Mahree Bok. What I liked most about The Color Of Friendship is that these two young ladies acted like real kids instead of Hollywood kids you see on so many shows.
The other thing about The Color Of Friendship is the hope it shows. We older folks live with so many built in prejudices and feelings and the hope of the world is that the younger generations as they come see past more and more of them. In another film about South Africa, a black character says to Donald Sutherland that it's all going to work out in the end because your son will not believe their lies. As we see here, young Ms. Haun does question the racist assumptions that the apartheid South Africa was built on.
Carl Lumbly, best known for playing Detective Petrie on Cagney&Lacey, plays Ron Dellums who is now Mayor of Oakland, California. Lumbly is fine in the part although if you look at pictures of Ron Dellums, he could be Morgan Freeman's twin brother. But I guess the producers could not afford Morgan Freeman. Penny Johnson plays Roscoe Dellums who sadly in real life got divorced from Ron Dellums many years after 1977 when this film is set. Her character is from the Phylicia Rashad school of mothers, that's not a put down.
Filmed in 2000 The Color Of Friendship turned out happily to be be a harbinger of things to come in South Africa. Don't miss this film if the Disney Channel ever broadcasts it again.
