Crooklyn (1994)

Endearing, sweet, funny, sad. This movie had the pacing of a book, slow and detailed, but it was excellent. Visually, I adored the colors and scenery of 1970s New York. Many colorful minor characters that really represent the scene well. The Ru Paul cameo was a nice touch.It's not gimmicky or trying to be funny. It's actually genuinely funny in spots, but mostly it is just very endearing and heartwarming. Brings back memories of childhood, no matter who you are or when you grew up, you'll relate to some aspect of this movie. It's a feel-good, coming of age, chaos and struggle of life movie through the eyes of Troy, the only girl of 5 children of a lower class family in New York.Alfre Woodard and Zelda Harris are fantastic. Harris is quite the little actress.

Great movie, has everything that a good movie could have. You can feel the emotions of the family from start to finish, especially from the daughter Troy. This movie is a good with the character development of her especially when she grows to become the woman of the house. Perfectly captures the childhood of Troy and what growing up that time was like. Being raised as the only girl of a family . Subjected to violence(being chased down the street by dope heads, sees family friend arrested for assaulting neighbor) and poverty (scenes where she is embarrassed to use food stamps, family is split up when they can no longer pay bills) she but she still manages to have a good childhood. Such a good movie, a masterpiece, Spike Lee's best work in my opinion.

I am a 17 year old guy who has been living in Brooklyn all his life so I know what Brooklyn is like. I say that this film was good because it shows how Brooklyn used to be back in the days before i was even born.It was actually smart to make the girl in the family the main character in the film. I say this because she was the only girl out of four boys in the family. This movie was very kinda sad to because when.....spoiler alert... the mom died in the film the girl basically took over the mother's life. But the film actually reminds me of when I was little when she used to yell at me and stuff. The mother raised her kids with respect.The would have the kids wake up at certain times and sleep at certain times, thats a good mother in my book. But anyways good film that reminded me of real life.

The closing credits of Spike Lee's 1994 film Crooklyn state that what we saw as an audience was a work of fiction. They also state that Crooklyn had more than one writer and those writers (Lee and his real life brother and sister) drew some of their inspiration from their own lives growing up in a low rent Brooklyn neighborhood. If this is the case and the film is not exactly a true story, then after a recent viewing, I started to wonder why and for what reason, it was made. Now granted, Spike Lee always has good intentions. And most of the time he gets energetic performances from his cast. However, in Crooklyn's case, the material he is saddled with (the story and the monotonous, yet accurate script) is entirely lightweight, and it doesn't have the strength to fill a 2 hour-plus exercise. Whatever conflicts that occur between the characters (characters that fade in and out of the proceedings) are never fully realized and resolved, the one event or tragedy that occurs toward the film's conclusion does not fully beef up any dramatic momentum, and most of the scenes involving the main family depicted (the Carmichael family) feel tedious and in serious need of editing. In essence, Crooklyn would have more effective as a side plot of Lee's family childhood included in a T.V. special/documentary about his life as a director. What came out in 1994 though, is an authentic, yet unnecessary portrayal of a family of 5 kids (four boys, 1 girl) living in Brooklyn, NY in the summer of 1973.Using many unknown child actors and casting himself as a neighborhood glue sniffing junkie, Lee shoots a film that follows the lives of the fictional family, the Carmichaels. They consists of a hard working school teacher (always tough as nails Alfre Woodard), her calming, hard- up musician husband (with this film and Lee's Clockers, Delroy Lindo is now one of my true acting heroes), and their five children (the film slowly begins to put its main focus on the only daughter in group being Troy, played with confidence by Zelda Harris). Although they are the main tenants of the building they are living in, they are struggling to make ends meet (they fail to pay the electric bill for everybody else and the building loses power) and Carolyn Carmichael (Woodard) being the sole provider, puts a strain on the family dynamic. She and Woody Carmichael (Lindo) fight and argue because he is not able to make any money playing his music (he's a piano player and composer). Crooklyn also in the smallest detail takes a look at some of the other people that live on the same block as the Carmichaels. They are side characters that don't get a lot of screen time to establish themselves, let alone add to the workings of the plot (a plot with a very thin skin). As I stated a couple sentences ago, watching this exercise, you begin to realize that the young Troy becomes the focal point of the movie in general. It's not entirely known upfront. But by the last twenty minutes or so, you understand why. By then it's too late because too much running time is passed and not enough has happened. If the whole entire film focused on this little girl, I think it might have worked. I stress the words might have.When it's all said and done, this is a harmless motion picture that seemed close to Lee's heart. I don't think it's a bad film by any means. I just feel that the subject matter wasn't deep enough or potent enough to engage an audience seeking entertainment value or for lack of a better word, excitement. Yes, the period detail is pretty solid with the soundtrack being composed of some 70's classics and a few rap tunes. The opening credit sequence is excellent, depicting a normal routine of childhood antics (double dutch jump rope, tag, street races, etc.) on a hot summer day in NYC. And the closing credits are a delight leading with an intro by Soul Train creator Don Cornelius followed by a dance sequence on said T.V. show. But, in between, the movie glides by without really saying anything or provoking any deep meaning. So my high end analysis is this: instead of watching people's lives on screen, the only way to really embrace this film, is by being in that place and time, and actually inhabiting some form of their existence. If you lived in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood back in 1973, this flick might be your cup of tea. If you didn't, decide to take in a viewing, and wanted to immerse yourself in the world of Crooklyn, (you know its characters and its story) by hook or "crook", you'll ultimately feel cheated at what you just saw.