Six Degrees of Separation

1993 "For Paul, every person is a new door to a new world."
6.8| 1h52m| R| en| More Info
Released: 08 December 1993 Released
Producted By: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

The story of a young, gay, black, con artist who, posing as the son of Sidney Poitier, cunningly maneuvers his way into the lives of a white, upper-class New York family.

Genre

Drama, Comedy, Mystery

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Director

Fred Schepisi

Production Companies

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

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Six Degrees of Separation Audience Reviews

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie
Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies
Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
slightlymad22 Continuing my plan to watch every Will Smith movie in order, I come to Six Degrees Of Separation (1993)Plot In A Paragraph: Based on a true story. An affluent New York couple (Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channinh) find their lives touched, intruded upon, and compelled by a mysterious young man (Will Smith) who is not quite who he says he is.Will Smith totally knocks it out of the park in this movie. He is utterly compelling!! You just can't stop watching him. Changing was nominated for an Oscar for her work here, and personally I think Smith should have been nominated too. He is brilliant. Donald Sutherland is as brilliant as he always is. That comes as no surprise, the surprise was Smith had a performance like this in his locker. Likewise Channing, who I had not seen in anything since Grease. Director Fred Schepi Wanted Meryl Streep, whom he has recently worked with in A Cry In The Dark for the role of Ouisa. However the film could never have been made if Channing hadn't been cast as Ouisa. She starred in the Broadway version, and the playwright, John Guare, stipulated that if the play were adapted to a film, Stockard Channing would have to reprise her role. Without Stockard as Ouisa, the movie was not to be made at all.The supporting cast is great too Ian McKellan, Heather Graham, Anthony Michael Hall and a certain J.J Abrahams.It's probably a bit too artsy and talky for most people here to bother watching. But I found it engrossing though.Despite positive reviews, the movie only grossed $6 million at the domestic box office.
revnig Of all the movies I've seen this one has to be the most contrived and pretentious. Like the fast paced and totally unbelievable dialogue for the 60s sitcom "'MASH" this movie is like that on steroids. In a nutshell, PEOPLE DON'T TALK LIKE THAT! The best way to describe is it's a combination of that annoying snappy, quick witted, (again) unrealistic dialogue of Neil Simon AND (try to visualize) Woody Allen lampooning people who are impressed by their own self importance. The characters are either obnoxious or self absorbed. I find all the characters to be incredibly self important. It's a horrible movie and felt the need to shower when it was over, yecccccch. While watching the film I continued to ask myself .."what is this"? Now the good news ,,, it's so bad that its a must see, looking at other reviews on this site I seem to be in the minority. Of. Ourselves it's others who are full of themselves too, Sorry guys I'm right and you're wrong . I grade this movie F? And the F stands for something else
lasttimeisaw Nearly 20 years ago, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION should be regarded as Will Smith's breakthrough role into the mainstream Hollywood, the film is adapted by a renowned play by John Guare, directed by Aussie Fred Schepisi (from A CRY IN THE DARK 1988) and Channing reprises her role in the film edition which has guaranteed her sole Oscar nomination so far. Ever since the opening strain, there are echoes of high-class snootiness abounds which sets the keynote of the whole conversation-foiled phoniness among its quite antipathetic characters, namely the Kittredge couple, then when Will Smith's young intruder emerges, the tension never alleviates although it seems that from the surface the harmony is unfeigned at the beginning and Smith's identity as Sidney Poiter's son is ever questioned, simply since he knows their children's name and his eloquent run-down of his father's filmography, but presented by Smith's black color, the unspeakable sensitivity of racism is well-written and underscored. Added that the paraphrase of CATCHER IN THE RYE is more or less a stratagem of showboating, so when all the boast ends, the ugly truth manifests himself, a satirically comedic story continues with a welter of less spectacular vignettes. Written from a true story, John Guare's screenplay is less staggering than the integral cast, Channing is superb in her final revelation scene but elsewhere, her ability is curbed and sometimes even a bit OTT, Sutherland is more natural and his role is much worse in both moral and ethnic gauges, still another great performance for his undervalued career. Will Smith is the linchpin to influence his low-life leverage onto these upmarket snobs, his performance is not so astonishing on account of the greenness and rawness, but he is luminous in front of cameras, although the fake gay-kiss is a let-down, Hollywood's conservationism is just as dreadful and stinking as its unimaginative blockbuster monopoly. Funny thing is that in the film, Smith make a spiel on the importance of the supremacy of imagination, which plays a grave part in distinguishing human from other species, but now has being over-abused in the mundane media, but the whole theory is too feeble to be taken seriously, neither by upper class nor by those less self-concerned great amount of masses. So who is the real audience of the film? The filmmakers behind it had not a clue! PS: a young J.J. Abrams is in the film as well, as an actor, who could expect that?
sandover The fact that the actual title comes from, as Channing's Ouisa informs us at some point, everybody being six persons - friends, acquaintances, lovers - away from celebrity, that is someone famous, is like an intended, over-prepared, pointless irony: it rather reads like six degrees of preparation, or six degrees away from greatness.The film has no consistent pace, is merely a play transfered - and not worked through - to celluloid, and a mediocre, portentous one, for that matter.Where it should have been an ensemble effort, it gets muddled mid-way by a flash back on how Smith's Paul was "discovered": a slight variation on the Pygmalion myth/paradigm, but weighed down by Smith's sudden moodiness, too much and too suddenly of a "man", especially for a gay, polished character. This lacks subtlety, and subtlety along with gusto is what the film was most in need. If this was intended in tune with other quasi-farcical moments, it was a ghastly error.An improbable phone-call between Ouisa and Paul muddles whatever premise and goes on forever. That much for dramatic economy.Yet Channing and Sutherland shine through, and Channing gives a tour-de-force in a nutshell during her final, small monologue, which may well be the film's moment. Afterwards smacking with a stupid closure (slapping a tree's leaves the way she did the moment of creation between God and Adam at the Sistine Chapel) of a ho-hum symbolic-and-so-manhattanite-released conclusion.This sounds worse than it is, and maybe it is, going from extreme, supposed subtlety, some good, very good lines, to cardboard situations and skimmed if not skipped direction. Watch it for its good moments and since the word imagination garlands the film with some of its best lines, imagine the film it could have been.