Fast Food

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

A HERO AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A SANDWICH Directed by Ralph Nelson Screenplay by Alice Childress

Benjie (Larry Scott) is a black kid, 13 years old, living in Watts, showing talent in school and resentment at home. The problem is that his father has run off and his mother (Cicely Tyson) is living with a man (Paul Winfield) whose presence is upsetting to the boy. Up to a point, this is to be expected. What is harder to understand is why this stepfather figure so powerfully distresses the child, since, despite the man's lack of legal status in the household, he is a paragon--hard working, loving, ever eager to reach out to the boy.

After a time we begin to suspect that the situation exists merely as a dramatic convenience, to give Benjie some reason to turn to drugs, and then go through a rehabilitation process that comes replete with many melodramatic setbacks. In the end, we are left not really caring about the near tragedies we have witnessed, the near triumphs we are asked to share.

The reason for the film's lack of effect lies in a combination of ineptitude and highmindedness. The actors cannot be blamed; they struggle hard, and with occasional success, to humanize a story that is schematically structured like a case history. Ralph Nelson's direction does not help; it is routine, though it is hard to know what could be done with a script that keeps freezing up in order to deliver tiresome sociological sermons.

The hope of movies like this is that they can provide serious family entertainment, food for thought to throw on the dinner table along with the broccoli.

But the fact is that the people who make them are, at best, specialists in convenience foods, stuff that leaves you hungry even as you push away from the table. A Hero ain't nothin' but carbohydrates.

--Richard Schickel

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