In 2004 HBO Films decided to try their hand at the polemical subject of race in New York. Usually, this results in ill wrought PC crap like Spike Lee's 1989 fantasy, Do The Right Thing. Instead, they crafted an improvisational workshop concoction called Everyday People, about the closing of a fictive Jewish deli and restaurant called Raskin's in the heart of Brooklyn. And, the truth is, it's not a bad film. Is it great? No. Is it in a league with such classic New York films as Manhattan or My Dinner With Andre? No. But it is Do The Right Thing admixed with last year's Oscar winner, Crash; except that it's better written. Yes, it is a film filled with vignettes, and some don't work, but about three quarters of them work well enough for me to recommend the film…. My only lament over Everyday People is that the scenes that do not work, which get a little too speechy and preachy, seem to have come, from McKay's own admission, the improv process. Any artist has to have a real vision of their art. Without it, it gets ungainly and formless, which mars parts of this film. A better screenwriter could have tightened this film up into something excellent, perhaps even great, rather than merely being good. Nonetheless, when it is good, the film is quite good, and much better than Do The Right Thing or Crash. Sometimes, especially when you just want to relax and watch a 'little' movie- one sans graphic sex and/or violence, that's more than enough.

As a fan of the real stuff, a title like the one this movie has attracts a lo. Watching the trailer, one can imagine some things and create illusions when not even knowing what will be seen. Personally, I believe the filmmakers carried with a great responsibility to develop a story with that title; so I went to see if they could do it right.

From the beginning the environment is warm, with simple images and a soundtrack that stayed with me long after the film. It was then when I was taken to a restaurant, where all the employees where being informed the same would be sold and that the weeks of work remaining where few. It's a strong scene, considering the messenger being verbally attacked by the employees during the meeting, some questioning an empty future after fifteen years of work.

Some will receive the news later on, some won't even find out; because that's how it is. Anyway, it was disappointing that the film based itself on one determined situation with defined characters. I didn't expect that, because I can find it with more complexity in another movie, while in this one the ending confuses its meaning between the pleasant and the awkward.

At least the actors try to be some of what the movie wanted to show in their characters "everyday people". They get inside the deep of the ordinary, so we can see an inspired Reg Cathey as a street salesman. In probably the best moment of the film, his characters walks along the street and is bothered by some kids: "Bump", they call him. There he recognizes one of them, and says to him: "How's your mother doing?". The kid, with his friends that just criticized the man's shoes by his side, lowers his head down: "She's OK". Then the man walks away, saying: "Send her my regrets", after the best example the movie gives of the people we see everyday.

The rest of the cast, mostly not known or inexperienced actors, do their job correctly in Jim McKay's little world. What I can't understand is, still, the racism towards black people and their fights with white people. The end credits divide in squares of two colors: black and white. I hope there's no subliminal or hidden message in them and I hope HBO continues to do these movies.

"Everyday People" is a lukewarm HBO product which takes us into a day in the life of a handful of mostly Afro-Am people who are interconnected by their relationship to a Brooklyn neighborhood restaurant which is about to be bought out by corporate interests in a block-wide urban development project. You'll get to see a waitress wannbe poet argue with her mom about her future and the eatery owner anguishing over his decision to sell out. You'll get to see a street bum lecturing local blacks about their roots and a yuppie corporate type trying to close the deal. While the film tries to conjure the ethnic personality of "Barbershop" with the heart of "Big Night" it manages little more than a monotonous drone of uninspired dialogue which finally tapers off into nothingness with an unsatisfying conclusion. Nothing new here. (C+)