For Tim Blake Nelson's sake, ignorance is indeed bliss.  It’s a good thing that I have never read, nor am I that familiar, shamefully enough, of Shakespeare’s original interracial story, Othello.  If I had been, then it may have made my dislike for this remake even greater.  As it is, O, yet another unnecessary rehash of Sir William’s work is a dull, inconsistent, and inexplicably uneven retelling, whatever the origins may be.  On it’s own, it stands as a tireless effort to capitalize on the serious side of the teen movie genre, while attempting to capitalize on the issues of interracial dating, familial jealousy, and true love.  The characters actions are never justified, because they are never developed, or explained enough to make us care.  Cursory mentions, and glances are not enough to show any kind of depth, and in order to elicit any kind of empathy or sympathy, introspective knowledge or personality and emotion is necessary.  This film has none of those qualities, and as a result, collapses under the weight of its own words and intentions.

O, is Odin, a star prep school basketball player whom the coach loves more than his own son Hugo (Hartnett) and who is dating the dean’s daughter Desi (Stiles).  If haven’t guessed, O is black, Desi and Hugo are white, Odin is the only African-American at the school, and apparently comes from a troubled background, but is truly genuine in his intentions towards Desi, and his career.  When Hugo finds out that his friend Roger (Henson) has a crush on Desi, it is the last straw in his contempt for Odin, who considers him a close friend.  Through a series of deceitful and manipulative actions, Hugo sets out to create tension between the two lovers, using the racial differences, her friendship with another player Mike, and heresy based on typical male/female relations.  Granted, this story makes it sound a lot more interesting than the actual execution is, and the failure rests squarely on the shoulders of the director and writer who are so anxious to deliver the reactions to emotions, that they fail to generate any dimension to any of the characters so that we would actually care about them.  Show us more of the rift between Hugo and his father (Sheen), give us more insight into the background that Odin came from, without making them distractions and subplots.  Simple character development, something screenwriting 101 should teach you, is this films biggest failure.  The potential existed for a very acerbic, realistic perspective on racial, social, and paternal issues here, and the reactions from the characters are intense, Pfeiffer especially helps this along with his incendiary, yet heartfelt performance, but I never got into any of it, it came across more like a botched WB movie of the week than anything else. Director Nelson, who ironically co-starred in a much more successful classic literary adaptation (O Brother Where Art Thou) must still be honing his skills at giving his characters emotional and sympathetic reactions and making us care about them, while progressing a story.  When dealing with Shakespeare, whether it be in pure form, or adaptation, it helps for us to understand motivations, and relate to them since they are essential to story progression.  Nelson, given a talented cast, fails on all accounts.

Mentioning performances, aside from Pfeiffer, whose debut film Clockers is an underrated gem, the remainder of this immensely talented cast gets lost in the shuffle.  Stiles, reprising a similar, but less complex, character from Save the Last Dance, does little but smile, look cute, be sexy, and react to things that the script tells her to feel.  Henson, star of another underrated classic, The Mighty, is the true causality of this film, relegated to almost buffoon status.  Even when he gets a chance to show emotion, such as a scene during a basketball game where he sits in the “wrong section”, his reaction is more a byproduct of what we expect, and what he was told, then what he actually may be feeling. 

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