About half as good as "Catch Me If You Can", this at times funny film is way too one note, that note, of course, being that the white establishment is so stupid that it can even be hoodwinked by a none too clever con artist. I got the point after the first scam involving the title character impersonating a Time Magazine journalist and by the middle of the second, when Street pretends to be a surgeon, I was officially tired of the whole thing. That I didn't bail until the start of the third impersonation (an African exchange student at Yale) was mostly due to writer/director/star Wendell B Harris' comic chops, which are not inconsiderable. Kinda surprised that he didn't get a shot at a second feature, at least as a scenarist and/or actor. Give it a C plus.

Wendell B. Harris -- he also wrote and directed this movie -- is bored with his life with his well-paying job with his father's company and his beautiful wife. So he reinvents himself as an exchange student at Yale, then as various other people. It's all remarkably easy for him.

He's playing William Douglas Street Jr., a real man who did exactly that. It's a remarkable performance, although after a while it becomes apparent that it is a performance; after all, Harris is acting here, and his ability to work in different registers is an actor's meat and potatoes.

Nonetheless, the movie itself is an interesting character study, as the character reveals himself as a very intelligent manic-depressive who grows bored with his successes. That's good scripting combined with good acting. I'm not too sure that the ending, which is probably lose to what happened, is good story-telling; the police come to arrest him and the story ends, like a Tex Avery cartoon.

In real life, Street kept the impersonations going for perhaps 46 years, false identities he assumed included those of a reporter for TIME magazine, a Houston Oilers wide receiver, an all-star football player from the University of Michigan, a physician at Henry Ford Hospital (in 1973), attorneys (1979 and 1980) and as a first-year medical student at Yale University. Staff at the Detroit Human Rights Department where he posed as an attorney volunteer found him skillful enough that "if he ever straightens out, we wouldn't mind having him back." What the movie doesn't mention is that he was caught kiting checks and extortion. He was sentenced in his mid-60s to three years on identity theft.

It's a shame this film didn't get more notice and better distribution at the time it was released, in spite of being championed by indie fave Steven Sorderbergh. I've been waiting for another directorial effort from Wendell B. Harris, but nothing appears to be forthcoming. That's unfortunate but indicative of the realities of contemporary Hollywood, where talented black performers are given short shrift in favor of the bottom line. This usually means that the project that gets made is based on the name recognition of the rising black star who's attached and where they are on the pop music charts.

Even though the film itself suffered a bit on the production value end because of its low budget, the story was original and Mr. Harris' portrayal of the identity shifting protagonist was exhilarating for its boldness. The idea of person of color who unapologetically subverts "the system" is daring in and of itself. The fact that it was done with style and a good bit of humor was both refreshing and encouraging. It says that there are statements to be made through the medium of film without being overtly confrontational or dogmatic.