"Six Degrees of Separation" is about a rich fifth avenue couple, the Kittredge's, who are conned by a young black man one night and spend the next few weeks finding out as much as they can about this boy. They go around telling the story to everyone they come across and find friends who went through the same experience days before. The movie is very slow moving, with many of the important scenes carried out through endless dialogue and very little else going on. Originally being a stage piece, the heavy dialogue is to be expected; however, the adaptation to screen leaves you wanting a little more. In spite of it's flaws, "Six Degrees of Separation" gives an interesting insight on how superficial lives can be and how we sometimes take what we have for granted.

Occupy Wall Street might use this film for fund raisers. It presents the livIng hell of being rich and shallow, and it gives me the creeps much more today than it did when I first saw it. There are some interesting references that date it. For example, the Rainbow Room ejects Will Smith for dancing the tango with a male friend, an act which no such NYC establishment would likely do today. Along those lines, Michael Anthony Hall hands in a very courageous performance as the gay kid who falls for Will and sets his antics in motion. I remember how sensational that kiss between them seemed at the time. Will's character has universal appeal. He is the ultimate con man and hustler, but he is so successful because he is charming. Maybe if rich people today would allow themselves to fall for what is charming, they would delight in helping the struggling people of the world today rather than worrying so much about selling their Kandinskys. Stockard Channing turns in one of the great film performances of the century, showing how a One-Percenter can experience a spiritual epiphany. In this sense, Guare is a modern Dickens, deserving of all the accolades he received for this script and screen play, which reminds us that we are six degrees of separation not only from Kevin Bacon but of every kid in Zuccotti Park or Tahrir Square. "How much of your life can you account for?" With tears in her eyes, Stockard Channing asks Donald Sutherland this question with the same direness in her voice that Jesus must have had when he addressed the rich guys in the Holy Land.

I guess we can see the genius of Will Smith right from the start. This is a film about a chameleon who is able to create for himself identities suited to an intriguing game he is playing. He really wants to be loved, but has become so deeply entrenched in his charade that he soon isn't sure what he wants. He is a master of subterfuge with a smile and a wink. He claims to be the son of someone who is relatively reclusive and unapproachable. This gives him the opportunity to invade people's lives; but for what? It's his "victims" that grow because of him. He is searching for a family but needs so many assurances. He chooses the super-rich, which makes his job much harder. The performances by Donald Sutherland, Stockard Channing, and Smith, himself are quite incredible. I began by absolutely hating these people. They are so smug and pretentious that they make one gag. And that's why their redemption due to this invader is so poignant. They grow to love this young man in their own ways, despite the fact that he appears dangerous (is he; I don't know). Of course, the six degrees is the theory that we are all related in some way if we go back six generations. The thing asked is, how can we then be so different. A real surprise.

This film is nothing but an interminable sequence of flashbacks where a middle-to-older age couple tell and retell the story of how they were duped by a young man into believing he was Sidney Poitier's son.I saw it because the combination of Donald Sutherland and Will Smith seemed great, but it must be the worst film of both of these two great actors.In the end, this movie is nothing but a very pretentious psychodrama about how a very pretentious couple of not very successful art dealers came into contact with a boy of lower social class and ended loving him. There are many far better films than this one in that theme. There is even a line where one of the characters is compared to Henry Higgins that will give a tip to those who want to look for an alternative.