Social satire about a rich white kid (Beau Bridges) buying a tenement in a poor black neighborhood (Park Slope, Brooklyn). He dreams of converting it into a swinging bachelor pad filled with groovy art, but first he has to get rid of those pesky tenants. Needless to say, he fails, but learns some valuable lessons along the way.
Bridges' character isn't evil so much as naive and thoughtless; as one character tells him, he's "casual" in a way only the entitled can be. The movie is a time capsule of racial attitudes circa 1970. It was filmed on location in the wake of MLK's assassination and the summer of riots that followed. Bridges was afraid he might really be killed by an angry black mob. While uneven and heavy-handed at times, it's a valuable social document of a mostly-forgotten era. It has a (mostly) happy ending that could only happen in Hollywood; in real life, Park Slope was gentrified, and the poor blacks that lived there were squeezed out.
Bridges' character isn't evil so much as naive and thoughtless; as one character tells him, he's "casual" in a way only the entitled can be. The movie is a time capsule of racial attitudes circa 1970. It was filmed on location in the wake of MLK's assassination and the summer of riots that followed. Bridges was afraid he might really be killed by an angry black mob. While uneven and heavy-handed at times, it's a valuable social document of a mostly-forgotten era. It has a (mostly) happy ending that could only happen in Hollywood; in real life, Park Slope was gentrified, and the poor blacks that lived there were squeezed out.