Heart Trouble Soul Man

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

In the beginning was Gentleman's Agreement, in which Nice Goy Gregory Peck pretended to be Jewish, the better to write an earnest indictment of anti- Semitism for a magazine. Now, almost 40 years later, comes Mark Watson (C. Thomas Howell), overdosing on tanning pills and learning what it feels like to be black. But Mark is no gentleman: short of funds, he is out to obtain a scholarship to Harvard Law School intended for a black student. And the only agreement the filmmakers have reached is to aim for safe mediocrity.

To be sure, whenever the grave and lovely Rae Dawn Chong appears as Sarah, the young black woman Mark falls in love with, this pact is broken. But she cannot overcome the cliches of mistaken-identity comedy that were stylized when Plautus was a pup. Or enliven the film's sermon that even in enlightened environments like Harvard, racial stereotyping and unconscious prejudice still exist. The approach is too comfortable, the tone patronizing. The N.A.A.C.P. has greeted Soul Man with protests; one suspects it is not so much because the movie's heart is in the wrong place, but because its heart is a mechanical one. -- R.S.