Tyra Banks in Higher Learning (1994)

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Featuring a fantastic cast, a solid soundtrack and a thought-provoking screenplay, you’d expect John Singleton’s Higher Learning to be some kind of modern mini-classic. Unfortunately, the movie suffers from an uneven pace, some extraneous characters and an overall air of preachiness. Singleton deserves praise for shining the spotlight on some of today’s biggest social issues; it’s just unfortunate that the laws of cinema ultimately blunt some of his messages.

Higher Learning follows a diverse (and barely connected) group of incoming freshmen at the fictional Columbus University. (That a major American university would be named after such a politically controversial historical figure is one of the more ham-handed images Singleton employs.) If Higher Learning were a campus comedy, these characters would be described as stereotypes but for the sake of Singleton’s intended messages, I suppose the broad strokes are necessary.

We are introduced to the “young black athlete” (Omar Epps, Love and Basketball), the “spoiled white girl” (Kristy Swanson, Big Daddy), the “alienated and maladjusted farm boy” (Michael Rapaport, Bamboozled) and the “angry militant African-American” (Ice Cube, Ghosts of Mars). Each of these characters is laden with a subplot all her or his own, while they occasionally mingle together with generally unpleasant results.

The cast is strong across the board with Rapaport as the main standout. He gives a tragic performance as a young man who simply craves acceptance and is unable to find any. Ice Cube steals a few scenes while spouting his rhetoric and Regina King (Down to Earth) is great in a small role. Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix) is pretty solid as a college professor who chooses to challenge his students in a rather unorthodox fashion, although he’s sporting a silly Jamaican accent that threatens to turn his performance into a campy hoot. Also of note is a small performance by the lovely Jennifer Connelly (Requiem for a Dream), who shows up as a mild-mannered lesbian who attempts to strike up a romance with Swanson’s character. Oh yeah, this movie jumps on the homosexual angle as well.

Much like your typical after-school television specials, Higher Learning presents a series of sensitive “issue stories,” including (but certainly not limited to) date rape, campus racism, the exploitative nature of college athletics, the allure of hate groups and the overall difficulties of “just getting along” together. If many of these “hot topics” seem a bit forced or trite, the movie doesn’t suffer too much simply because it’s never boring. While some of the plot threads are tied up predictably or a bit too conveniently, Higher Learning is at the very least an intelligent movie that will give you some food for thought regarding the state of 1990’s American society and what the youth of America were inheriting.

Nudity Report: Supermodel Tyra Banks has a small scene as a college athlete, so logically she has to show up at least once clad in a wonderfully clingy spandex outfit! The aforementioned lesbian kiss scene between Ms. Connelly and Ms. Swanson seems (on paper) like the stuff of horny dreams but the scene’s more tentative and clinical than it is likely to cause any real wood.

IMDB Summary: 1,934 IMDb users rate this one at 6.3/10.

Box Office: Grossed about $38 million back in 1995.

DVD Info: Widescreen Anamorphic format, theatrical trailers.


Written by: Scott Weinberg