Crooklyn
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Movie Reviews of Crooklyn
Movie Review: pleasant quasi-bio of growing up in Brooklyn...
Summary: 4 Stars
Delroy Lindo puts in another great performance, the cast is generally very good and here Spike Lee finally gets off the soapbox for a change. It's just straight bio of sorts, a simple story about a simple family going through some hard times, populated by many memorable characters. Very high reality quotient, nice blast from the past i.e. the Suckin' Seventies.Movie Review: Lee's trip down memory lane
Summary: 4 Stars
Crookyln involes Spike Lee's trip down memory lane and it's a memorable one. The cinematography and script are all excellent as always and the soundtrack represents the seventies very well. The film's only down point is that it's a bit long but still a great heartwarming film.Movie Review: [3.5]--Warm and bittersweet film
Summary: 3 Stars
Crooklyn, which Lee co-wrote with his siblings Joie Lee and Cinque Lee, marks a departure for Spike in its subject matter, offering a warm, tragicomic look at growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1970s, when the main drugs parents had to worry about their kids falling prey to wasn't crack or heroin but television and sugar. Alfre Woodard and Delroy Lindo head the Carmichael clan, a family of seven loosely based on the real-life Lees.
Woodard plays Carolyn, who teaches school and tries to keep the house in order, including her husband Woody (Lindo), a musician trying to stay true to his art even if that means placing his family in a financial strait-jacket. Crooklyn takes the point of view of the family's only daughter, 9-year-old Troy (Zelda Harris). While the film certainly looks through her eyes, it doesn't seem to be a strong enough viewpoint to carry the film's whimsical meandering. While Woodard, Lindo and Harris all give solid performances, the four brothers tend to disappear into the woodwork, never really developing into characters in their own rights. Subplots about a neighbor (David Patrick Kelly) and two glue-sniffing street kids (one played by Spike Lee) appear but never really go anywhere, though the glue sniffers do provide some funny camera angles. There aren't many overt flaws in Crooklyn. All but the most comic of urban violence has been removed, and we're left with a somewhat-idealized view of an early-70s Brooklyn.
Lee is as talented as any director is capturing an era, and some of the early scenes perfectly recall the mood of the time. The pop soundtrack may be a little too obvious, but it gets the job done. As usual, Lee has assembled an excellent cast. Alfre Woodard and Delroy Lindo do tremendous jobs. David Patrick Kelly provides a little comic relief as the white next-door neighbor who annoys just about everyone. Then there's Zelda Harris, whose unaffected performance is the glue that holds the picture together.
Crooklyn turns out pleasant enough, but by the end, it feels as if something has been left out and it just stops. The world of a child -- especially one pushed all-too-soon into adulthood -- is never easy, and this film captures the facets of Troy's odyssey. Beneath the surface of this deceptively simple motion picture lurks a keen insight.
Movie Review: I dont remember the movie being this boring
Summary: 3 Stars
I loved this movie hen I was younger. Thats why I purchased it. The movie got very boring at times.Movie Review: ONE OF THE WORST PICTURES I'VE EVER SEEN!
Summary: 1 Stars
Viewed: 8/02, 8/06
Rate: 1
8/02: This is one of the downright worst films I have ever seen, close to Waterboy, Vertical Limit, and The Legend of Bagger Vance. The actors in this movie are horrible. I find this movie unbearable and difficult to watch in one seating, continuing to squirm around. I stopped this video at least 15 times, making promises to myself to watch it at a time for 10 to 15 minutes each. The story is god-awful, and this movie has hit the bottom point based on moral values, especially on the perspective of how a ghetto Black family lives. The girl Troy makes me sick to my stomach. How they beat the white neighbor with glasses makes me to say that Spike Lee should be ashamed of himself displaying this kind of mockery. This movie is an obvious revelation that Spike Lee is a racist. I am not a racist, but this kind of scene is giving a message that white people, especially the ugly ones, deserve to be beaten up and made mockery out of. Wake up Spike Lee...this is not the 1960's when you can be Malcolm X of the African-American generation in the late 20th and the early 21st century. Spike Lee had no justification to provoke the old anger of Malcolm X through filmmaking. What I don't understand is why Troy (the leading black sister) is so special and still hurts the society, getting away with it. One of the worst line I have heard through the film was, "I hope we don't have to dress up for mommy's funeral." I am speechless as it seems like the children of the family do not really care about the mother's passing. I don't even appreciate the boy with glasses, beating up his siblings, be allowed to have total freedom to choose basketball over anything more important. The mother made me sick to my stomach also. The portrayal of her as a role model is nonexistent. Finally, last thing to say, when the movie nearly ends and the mother dies, I am calling it as an act of disrespect made by Spike Lee in reference to making the movie a "worthy-audience-gripping-to-feeling-sad-for-them" change of tide. I am telling you, this is an absolute one of the worst and racist films I have ever seen, and I have no respect for Spike Lee's work still even though I have seen Malcolm X, He Got Game, Do the Right Thing, etc.. The most important African-American film maker of the decade or even the century? Please...spare me the humor.
8/06: Crooklyn is a terrible film, lacking any value of entertainment and containing the worst characters I could possibly endure. I am not appreciative of any film where it's okay to lie and get away with it, beat up somebody because he looks geeky, and a mother teacher who actually profanes around her children and beating them around by her strictness. Who cares if it's a black film? It doesn't make it any more special than others. Oh good riddance...the mother died. That was the best part of the film. Yeah, she was an awful person to begin with. Crooklyn is appropriately titled because it's a breeding ground of future criminals. Looking how the black children lived was enough to convince me. Please, show me a nicer family than them, and I'll watch as long as there is a point. Also, please throw in some entertainment value. Spike Lee can't make a decent film...he is just a terrible filmmaker. All he does is portray extremities and try to shock people, but that's old and tired. Crooklyn was too formalistic because I've seen this type of movie in Terms of Endearment. Of the DVD, I can't believe it, as I thought it was a technical error in the VHS tape, that I saw the same squeeze, starting in the home of an Aunt in Maryland and lasted for a good portion of time. That was intolerable. "I hope we don't have to dress up for mommy's funeral," one of the children says. Nice...real nice. Again, definitely one of the worst pictures ever I've seen.