Same Kind of Different As Me

In one scene in Same Kind of Different As Me, a woman stares at her freshly made-up face in the mirror and murmurs, “You know, I weren’t always homeless.” She remembers when she had a husband and children and the tragic events that landed her alone at a rescue mission. It’s a striking moment that puts into simple dialogue and human faces the central themes of this inspirational movie: Don’t judge people based on where they are now. To truly know them, touch them—skin to skin, heart to heart. And you’ll never know what kinds of blessings are exchanged.

The biggest challenge with Same Kind of Different As Me, a drama based on a same-titled best-selling memoir, is also its greatest strength: The story sounds too sweet to be true. It’s a tale about a wealthy white art dealer and a homeless “modern-day slave” from two vastly different worlds who gradually forge a friendship of redemption, respect, and compassion. But apparently the world has no patience for such themes now. Already, critics have ripped the movie apart based on its trailer, calling it another “offensively tone-deaf” and “racist” story about rich white people who save a poor Magical Negro figure whose sole existence is to support that of white protagonists.

That’s not what I saw. When Denver Moore (Djimon Hounsou) shares his childhood as a black sharecropper in Louisiana, he honestly addresses the sin of racism. And when Ron Hall (Greg Kinnear) and his wife Deborah (Renée Zellweger) slowly patch up their adultery-stained marriage, their rekindling love feels believable, because forgiveness and grace are themes dominant in the Bible and in life. The movie also pushes back against the idea that the homeless only want handouts, or that they got themselves there.

If the story in Same Kind of Different As Me is true, then it offers good news to a world that’s increasingly cynical about anything beautiful—and that’s worth celebrating.