Roots: The Gift

Roots: The Gift is a two-hour movie that came out during the Christmas season of 1988. It depicts some incidents that occurred between Episodes 2 and 3, a time when Levar Burton had not yet transformed into John Amos. Well, I watched it last night on TV ONE. I was so excited when I saw it was about to come on. I love the Roots series, and I will write about it more during Black History Month. But I was especially excited because I expected a Trekkie's paradise. Not only was Geordi on it, but Captain Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager also had a big role. From the Internet Media Database, I've learned that Commander Tuvok (a black Vulcan) was also on it, but I don't remember seeing him.

There was this one woman, the matron of the house, and she looked so familiar. I was trying to figure out who she was. She turned out to be Ma Walton. I guess Alex Haley had a thing for The Waltons. John Walton, Sr. played a crude, racist manager of a slave ship on the first episode, and John Boy married a black woman on Roots: The Next Generation. Well, Ma Walton was somewhat of a racist on this movie. She admitted that she sometimes had reservations about the institution of slavery, but she felt overall that blacks were inferior to whites and that slavery was a part of God's natural order.

I often wonder why Alex Haley placed people we know and love in these kinds of roles. John Walton, Sr. was a crass racist. Ben Cartwright had Geordi beaten on his plantation. Mike Brady took Kizzy away from her parents and sold her to the Rifleman, who raped her. Burl Ives basically reinstituted slavery after the Civil War. And Ma Walton looked down on blacks. Maybe Haley was trying to humanize the people who supported slavery. They weren't necessarily bad people. They just happened to be wrong. Maybe that was because they learned racism from their youth, or they benefited so much from the system of slavery that they were resistant to change. Of course, there is one factor that undermines my theory: the Rifleman was a scumbag on the movies.

Overall, I thought the movie was corny. It was almost like a caricature of Roots. On Roots, Alex Haley did a good job in appealing to our emotions. You couldn't help but rejoice at the characters' good times, mourn at their tragedies, and become angry at the injustice that they were experiencing. But Roots: The Gift tried to force those emotions out of me through scenes that were not believable. For example, Kunta was playing a camel in a Christmas pageant, and he stood up and said he wasn't a camel--he was Kunta Kinte. I just found myself rolling my eyes throughout the ordeal. I would have liked Captain Janeway, but her contrived drawl was getting on my nerves.

My Time-Warner cable provider gave the movie two stars. I think it would have had two and a half stars if Lorne Greene played Dr. Reynolds, as he did in the miniseries. That would have added some gravitas, and it would have created greater continuity between the movie and the miniseries, making the movie more believable. Unfortunately, Lorne Greene died a year before the movie was made. Instead, Dr. Reynolds was played by someone who was nothing like Lorne Greene. I saw this guy on Highway to Heaven once. In fact, the movie had a few people who were on Highway to Heaven, like the blind girl who was in a coma.

So what was it about Roots that made it spectacular? Was it the music? The recognizable actors? The critique of racism? Well, Roots: The Gift had all of these things, and it still stunk. I'll still keep it on tape, since it is part of the Roots saga, but It's a Wonderful Life will be my Christmas fare next year instead of this movie.