Shirley Parent Guide

First-year-year Congressional representative Shirley Chisholm (Regina King) is excited to get to work on Capitol Hill. She’s the first African-American woman ever elected to the body, and she doesn’t intend for that to be her biggest achievement. But the wheels of politics grind exceedingly slow, and patience was never Shirley’s strong suit.

Before long, Shirley’s relentless, stubborn drive sees her on the presidential ballot in Florida. There’s a catch: she doesn’t have the resources or public profile to win a presidential election. The strain of the campaign (and Shirley’s insistence on doing things her way) is straining her already tense relationships with her manager, Stanley (Brian Stokes Mitchell), her advisor Mac (Lance Reddick), her husband Conrad (Michael Cherrie), and her sister Muriel (Reina King). Even though Shirely suspects her prospects are poor, she’s determined to try to make a difference in a system that seems to care little about people like her. No matter what it takes.

Family audiences have little to worry about from this historical biopic, apart from their children losing interest in the slow political story. There are three f-bombs dropped in rapid succession during a racially motivated attack (in which no one is injured) and a man is shot but not killed. This being the 70s, social drinking and frequent smoking are to be expected, but there’s no sexual content that I noticed. All in all, it’s a fairly clean film – just not one for young viewers who lack the historical context to understand the story.

Even with that context, the movie isn’t exactly gripping. It’s difficult to maintain tension on a story where everyone knows the ending – it’s not exactly a spoiler if I tell you that Shirley Chisholm did not, in fact, win the 1972 presidential election. So the film feels more like a personal drama as Shirley slowly pushes away and alienates almost everybody who’s still willing to help her. It’s not the kindest portrait in the world, but strong personalities tend to have a dark side. The bright side is her willingness to work herself into the ground to try to make change for the people who elected her.

Chisholm’s incredible real-world accomplishments aside, the film is a bit of a downer. Strong protagonist or not, the film seems unsure if it’s trying to be a portrait of quixotic devotion in a doomed quest, or some stirring tale about the virtue of hard work in American politics – to me, it certainly felt more like the former than the latter, and the two do not mix well. So, if you’d like to watch yet another well-meaning, hard-working individual get slowly crushed by big party politics, this is the film for you. If you get enough of that on the news, you might want to watch something else.