This domestic dramatic comedy takes a familiar structure-family tensions magnified after the arrival of an outsider-and gives it a density through simple, vivid observation and layers of folk symbolism that stimulate the imagination. Danny Glover plays a variation on the trickster-an archetypal figure in the deep storytelling traditions of Africa and black America-who visits an old friend's family in Los Angeles and quicky energizes the polarized aspects of the family. His charms, a sly mix of chivalry and superstitions, rub off like static electricity, exciting some and shocking others. (Glover, who was also one of the film's producers, turns in a remarkable performance that quietly galvanizes the whole film.) This modest film by Charles Burnett (who directed the earlier, much harsher The Killer of Sheep) didn't attract the attention that other recent films on the African American experience (Do the Right Thing, Boys in the Hood) garnered. But in its unassuming way, it has a humanity and a richness of observation that remind one of Renoir (particularly Boudou) or Chekhov. --Tom Kemper