Parents' Guide to A Soweto Love Story

This is a movie that slowly grows on you. A Soweto Love Story starts with a burst of clichés, overacting, and over-the-top manufactured emotion, but ends with a complete reversal of quality and a warm display of heartfelt, well-acted encounters that rescue the movie from itself. Early in the action, the mere announcement at a church service of a live band at a planned function commands the outsized reaction of wild applause and a standing ovation from the gathered congregants. Likewise, a restaurant owner implausibly forces a spoonful down the throat of a customer who says he doesn't like the soup, robbing the plot of any shred of credibility. A repo man comes for a debtor's $50,000 car but agrees to take a sofa instead. Even broad comedy has to make sense on some level.

The split in the movie's tone is partly attributable to a generational difference, as the younger actors never embrace the scenery-chewing style common to the older members of the cast, even when the over-the-top script seems to call for it. Subtlety generally takes over the movie's later minutes. When Menzi meets a woman as rigid as he is, he realizes that is not what he wants in a mate. Finally, although the plot still leaves enough large holes to drive a convoy through, responses become nuanced and more real as characters share seemingly true emotions with each other and the audience.