10 Greatest Disney Channel Original Movies
8. The Color Of Friendship
The Color of Friendship is a shining example of what happens when you treat kids like creatures of some intelligence and you don't talk down to them. You end up with a thoughtful, interesting piece about race relations, apartheid, and the friendship between a black girl from the US and a while girl from South Africa.
When Piper, a black girl from an upper middle class family in DC, begs her parents to host an exchange student from Africa, the last thing that she expects is to be sent a white girl. But that's what she gets.
And that's far from the last awkward assumption about race that is made in the movie. For example, it certainly doesn't help matters that when Mahree lands in the United States, she assumes for an uncomfortably long period of time that Piper's family are the servants of the people she is going to be staying with in America.
But over time and through exposure to different perspectives, both girls come out of the experience more enlightened. The Color of Friendship certainly goes on the books as the most intelligent DCOM, but also happens to be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding.