Black and White.

Black and White * Written and directed by James Toback * Starring Brooke Shields, Robert Downey Jr., Mike Tyson, and Scott Caan * Screen Gems

If there were any correlation between the number of gay roles an actor takes on and his actual inclinations, then Robert Downey Jr. would justify an entire float unto himself at gay pride. Barely out of bed with Tobey Maguire in Wonder Boys, he's back trying to get into Mike Tyson's pants in Black and White, a homophobic mouse turd of a movie written and directed by James Toback. And neither Downey nor the film offers much to feel proud about.

As Terry, the gay husband of a neophyte filmmaker (Brooke Shields) making a documentary about white kids who want to be hip-hop black, Downey offers the sort of twilight-zone homosexual that makes repressed young queers want to lock themselves in the closet and swallow the key. He's slithery and supercilious, hits on straight man mercilessly (shall we say masochistically?), and sashays down the street in flaming ensembles with shopping bag in tow. In short, he's every pre-Stonewall stereotype the "gangstas" and the "niggas" defend themselves against in their rap songs.

No one comes off smelling like a rose in Toback's reductive screenplay, but then no one else gets as big a fool's laugh as Downey does when he gets fag-bashed by Tyson (playing himself) at a party for coming on too strong to the prizefighter. (It's doubtful whether the impressionable young audience for this movie would appreciate the deeper implications of Tyson's lady-doth-protest-too-much outburst.) The real joke is that Downey finally finds a boyfriend by wearing Aramis cologne, which suggests that Toback may have really wanted to make a movie about gay men who want to be straight.

--J.S.