Film review by Steve Bennett

Dear White People is an ambitious movie that attempts to cram a whole spectrum of racial identity questions into a smart, wry campus comedy.

Director and writer Justin Simien makes no secret of his distain for how black people are stereotyped in mainstream media, usually a spectrum that goes no further than Big Momma's House 3 to 'sassy black secretary' roles

Here the characters certainly feel more real that any wise-cracking, jive-talking sidekick, while the very meaning of what it is to 'act black' – especially among image and social-media obsessed young adults trying to define their place in the world – is at the centre of the script.

Central to this debate is the charismatic Tessa Thompson as the portentously-named Samantha White, a mixed-race student activist and Silky-voiced campus broadcaster whose show, Dear White People, dispenses such advice as: 'The minimum number of black friends required so as not to appear racist has now risen to two. And no, you can't count Tyrone your weed guy.'

She's both outspoken and moderately spoken. Although she's described, unflatteringly, as being 'like Spike Lee and Oprah had some sort of pissed-off baby' if there's any danger of her coming across as an archetypal 'angry black chick', it's downplayed by rounding out her seemingly impetuous character with uncertainties. Although the sudden ill-health of her father, never previously mentioned, at a vital moment in her activism is clunky and unnecessary.

We meet her running for president of a predominantly black hall of residence at the Ivy League Winchester University against the Obama-like incumbent. It's a contest between those who would challenge the white-dominated status quo by provoking it, and those who would get ahead by using their talents within the system. But is that selling out? It evokes the tension between the 'house negro' and the 'field negro' of the slavery era.

As with all the issues brought up by Dear White People, the film chews around the possibilities, but avoids the simplistic trap of offering easy solutions.

The election also focusses on whether having a blacks-only house amounts to segregation, or whether it's a place for the black students to maintain their own identity, while a separate storyline involves positive discrimination, as the outsider Lionel lands a job on a prestigious student newspaper just to increase its racial diversity.

Lionel is not a character you see in Hollywood: a socially awkward, gay black guy genuinely unsure of his place in the world. If this were British he'd surely be played by Richard Ayoade, but anyone would be hard pressed to do a better job that the delicate Lionel Higgins.

But really few of the characters know who they really are… except perhaps the rich white students, who behave in exactly the way centuries of privilege has taught them. But even so there's a yearning to 'be black', as evidenced by the way they embrace the excesses of rap music, however selective a slice of black culture that is.

And there's an irony that the on-campus satirical magazine Pastiche (itself a pastiche of the Harvard Lampoon) allegedly calling the powerful to account is run by the most privileged white guy on campus, the son, no less, of the college president, who believes 'racism is over in America', as someone untroubled by it might think.

The movie speaks with a soft voice, which is not always the most effective for comedy, but there is plenty of wry wit in the script if you're alert to it. It's an interesting film more than a great – or indeed an hilarious – one; but such a thought-provoker on the subject of race seems long overdue.

• Dear White People is on limited release from Friday.

Review date: 6 Jul 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett