Movie Review: 'Same Kind of Different as Me'

I have a genuine pity for the faith-based audience. Few audiences are as underserved as the faithful. And few audiences are as exploited as the faith based filmgoer. The people at Pure Flix have made their fortune exploiting this audience by serving them half-baked, poorly made movies that pander to their faith without serving it. Pure Flix has little interest in the quality of their work and exist solely to make a buck. Just look at the awful roster of Pure Flix movies and you will find it difficult to argue my point.

Same Kind of Different as Me is not much different than those other low quality offerings; it just had the decency to hire better actors. Renee Zellweger and Djimon Hounsou may be at the mercy of a low-quality script and production, but they are far too good at what they do to be dragged down by it. They are the reason that I can’t fully dislike Same Kind of Different as Me because when asked to deliver in big moments, their talent transcends the limitations of the Pure Flix machine.

Same Kind of Different as Me is told from the perspective of Ron Hall (Greg Kinnear), a Texas-based art dealer whose wife Deborah has recently passed away. Ron has arrived at a friend’s home to attempt to write a book about his wife but his voice-over in the film tells us he’s struggling. If, like me, you believe that voice-over is has become the bankrupt screenwriters worst crutch, get ready for a serious amount of torture in Same Kind of Different as Me which abuses this crutch.

As Ron tells the story, we flashback two years before Deborah passed away. Ron is being forced to come clean about being unfaithful and has been met by a challenge from Deborah. After she breaks off his relationship with his mistress, she forces Ron to pay penance by joining her at a mission where she serves food to the homeless. Here, Deborah is shocked to find Denver (Djimon Hounsou), a man she claims to have seen in a dream before having ever seen him in real-life.

Deborah believes it’s a sign from God, but she sends Ron to talk to the man rather than try to do it herself. Denver is temperamental, to say the least, he carries a bat wherever he goes, so there is a logic to her thinking. It turns out that Denver is every bit of the good man she believed him to be from her dream, he just needed a little kindness and friendship to bring it out. As Ron spends more time with Denver, they develop a genuine friendship that changes both of their lives.

The plot isn’t quite as inspiring as my description. Same Kind of Different as Me is more shoddy in execution. The film plays out in fits and starts with a clearly uncomfortable Kinnear looking lost most of the time. Early in the film, Kinnear lays on a Texas accent that is downright embarrassing and while he thankfully laid off of it as the film went on, he never feels like he’s on the same page as either Zellweger or Hounsou who are more genuinely invested in their characters.

That however, could be due to both Zellweger and Hounsou being given big showy speeches that allow them to really sink their teeth in and do some acting. In a good movie, these speeches would be overkill and I would call them out as grandstanding. In Same Kind of Different as Me however, the three genuinely great speeches delivered in the movie stand out like an oasis in a desert of shoddy filmmaking and stunted storytelling.

Quite strangely, Zellweger and Hounsou have very few scenes together and only one of any length which is played entirely silent. All of their interaction is directed through Kinnear whose arc is finding empathy for the first time. That’s not a bad arc, but when you have a homeless, nearly 80-year-old man recounting a life of struggle and a faithful mother of two going through cancer while she, in saint-like fashion, accepts and forgives her husband’s infidelity and transforms the lives of dozens of homeless people along the way, Ron’s journey seems rather secondary.

It’s a little curious that the very emotional stories of a woman and a black man are entirely run through the perspective of a white man but I don’t think I should go there. Ron Hall was there for all of this and did write the book on which this movie is based so there is a logic to his being at the center of the story; even if his is the least interesting perspective in the movie and Kinnear’s performance is the least engaged of the three leads.

Roger Ebert once stated that a movie needs just three good scenes to make it worth recommending. Same Kind of Different as Me meets that criteria. The film has, in fact, four good scenes; inarguably good scenes. A moment where Hounsou’s Denver recalls picking cotton in a field in New Orleans before escaping to freedom and finding for the first time that black people had been free from slavery his whole life is deeply moving as is his revelation about what he did to survive his time in Angola Prison, known by some as the worst place on earth.

Zellweger telling her children about her terminal diagnosis is a scene filled with real grace and humor. Always an under-rated performer, Zellweger remains plucky and strong throughout Same Kind of Different as Me, and if this were a better made movie, one that centered on her as opposed to Kinnear, this might have been really something. Instead, we have just a few good moments, this terrific monologue and her equally graceful silent moment with Hounsou as the only good things in an otherwise mediocre faith-based drama.