A school teacher, her jazz musician husband, and
their five kids live in a neighborhood in Brooklyn. DRAMA
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Crooklyn (1994)Directed by Spike Lee
Written by Joie Lee, Spike Lee, Cinqué Lee Starring Alfre Woodard, Delroy Lindo, Zelda Harris, David Patrick Kelly, Carlton Williams, Sharif Rashed, Isaiah Washington |
Crooklyn is the closest Spike Lee has gotten to telling his own life story. It's got an uneven pace and even more uneven characters, but by the film's ending, you can tell how personal this one was. My biggest issue with Crooklyn is one that keeps coming up with Spike. There's no plot, and the characters are insufferable most of the time. There's very little to get invested in with Crooklyn, until Troy (Harris) starts becoming more of a character and less of a plot device.
Meet the Carmichael Family. Schoolteacher mother Carolyn (Woodard), jazz musician father Woody (Lindo), and their five kids. The one kid we follow around is the youngest girl, Troy, who shoplifts and picks fights with her siblings. Most of the film is spent watching Carolyn deal with her stubborn, irritating kids while Woody gets them ice cream and plays music. It isn't until Mom ends up in the hospital that we start to care about these characters, and that's pretty much the end of the movie. I don't even really want to mention the portion of the film where Troy goes and stays with her aunt and uncle. Spike had the "brilliant" idea to compress the film so that entire section of the movie looks disorienting and stretched. All it does is take you out of it and ruin a significant portion of the film in an attempt to look like an auteur. Spike Lee is known for two things, primarily. Being socially conscious and being experimental. He went for the latter with Crooklyn, and the end result is a boring movie that only picks up at the end, right when things are finally getting interesting. The film gets points for the performances and the soundtrack, but everything else is either bland, nonexistent, or poorly thought out. |