annaily 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.

ElMaruecan82 Following a brilliant streak of socio-politically charged movies such as "Do the Right Thing", "Jungle Fever" and "Malcolm X", "Crooklyn" comes as a Spike Lee joint in the same vein than "Mo' Better Blues", a lighthearted slice of African-American life in New-York neighborhood centering on a protagonist coming to terms with his personal demons and in the same time, inspiring us in our own real-life situations… another gem that makes me believe that, directing-wise, Lee's "gotta have it."And Spike Lee movies never imitate one another and "Crooklyn" works on its own level, a "N" that evokes both Nostalgia and Neighborhood, Brooklyn where Spike Lee grew up in the 60's and 70's, a Brooklyn misled by that pun in the title, for there's no crook in this Brooklyn, the closest characters to criminals spend time sniffing glue, the closest moments to confrontations are family arguments and the closest to an act of violence is an accidental punch in the face of a noisy neighbor. I don't think I'm spoiling the film by inviting you to lower your guard and stop being afraid, this is a nostalgic film, a coming-of-age story whose heroine is 10-year old Troy (Zelda Harris).It seems like a decade starts to induce nostalgia when it's 20 years old, and like "Dazed and Confused" one year earlier, the 70's started to tickle the mind of nostalgic film-makers, "Crooklyn" is set in 1973 according to some researches, a time where soul music, TV sitcoms, in fact TV and candies defined the most of childhood culture. In one strike of film-making simple genius, the opening credits feature all the games kids were playing at that time and the trivia says that none of the child actors knew how to play these games anymore … these are the devastating effects of the video game generation, to which I belong. But being born in the early 80's, I remembered some of these games and I don't think I got interested in video-games that early, there is more to explain their sinking into oblivion.And the reason has to do with my preconceived ideas about the film, being a Spike Lee movie set in a African-American neighborhood, I expected scenes of violence to punctuate the film, I expected seeing one of the children being confronted to drugs or the use of a gun, I thought that Troy shoplifting and lying to her mother would ultimately lead her to a dangerous descent into crime, I thought the father would be an abusive alcoholic man who'd abuse his wife, and if one thing, it was Alfre Woodward, as the mother, who got on my nerves more than the cool and surprisingly sweet and tender Woody, played by a great Delroy Lindo. No disrespect to Alfre, she just reminded me of my own mother, you have fun with your Dad but not moms and apparently this was still true in Lee's years.Once again, Spike Lee comes with a surprise and shows his capability to be warm and tender, funny and sweet, conveying the real feelings of childhood, but it's not the kind of magic resuscitated through childhood memories, Spike Lee was a teenager in the 70's and didn't sugarcoat his memories or those of his sister Joyce who co-wrote he film, those were really innocent times where kids could be left near the home without fearing getting a stray bullet or something else, kids could play outside, could dance, their only homemade distraction were eating and watching TV, which left plenty of room for imagination. Times have changed, and video-games and violence-oriented TV programs say more about the changes of mentalities and environment that confined kids in the TV room.A film like "Crooklyn" can appeal to any kid who's grown up in any neighborhood, basically, all of us, because it simply tells the story from a grown-up's perspective of how great were these years, when family made one, when our parents were young, where each year featured a new step forward into life. I remembered when I was a kid, each birthday, each number had something special 7, 8, 9, 10 etc. etc. Now, I'm 32 and I couldn't care less … I guess childhood is the magical part of our lives because we can't be nostalgic as kids, we don't have any references from the past, and the future is like in light-years, like stuck forever in childhood, we cherish the present and embrace life with all the fun and all the greatness. And this is what Troy' story is about.Troy is a little girl who tries to make her place in a family full of boys, she's bullied but she always has a comeback, she's sweet and curious, and through her journey, we turn the pages of all inner childhood diary, remembering these days where adults were untouchables or when we had to spend time in a stranger's house. The film features a chapter set in the South where Troy spends some vacation I her Uncle's family, we take a cool breath of fresh air with a cute friendship with a girl. Spike Lee would shoot the scene in a panoramic views but I agree that was unnecessary for the film didn't need these stylistic tricks, it was a novelty on its own. Anyway, after that vacation, you'd expect things to change for Toy, it will but not as you expect, and again, Spike Lee knows how to surprise you.The film is served by a wonderful casting, a great soundtrack reviving all the classics of the 70's, some nice supporting performance, from David Patrick Kelly as the constantly bullied neighbor weirdo to Isaiah Washington and a scene-stealing Aunt Queenie …I still have a soft spot for the performance of Delroy Lindo as a sweet and caring father.

MisterWhiplash Crooklyn has that subjective texture by someone of the New York independent school of film-making (which means it's a cool school more often than not), where personal expression through the medium leads directly into, or out of, the creator's own life experiences. It's a direct approach to call it autobiography, which I would imagine it is for not just Spike Lee (who could be seen, more or less, as the one Carmichael kid who wears big glasses and is obsessed with the Knicks), but Joie (the lead Troy perhaps ?) and Cinque (one of the younger kids I'd suppose as the youngest Lee sibling), who all wrote the script. It's about a family getting by and going through the struggles of the small kind (change the channel, turn off the TV, don't bother your sister/brother, did you steal that from him, etc) to the larger issues (parents arguing over money) that many families in urban sections of the cities have to go through every day. Only here the family is sassy, rude, cool, a little square, a little hip, and very identifiable in one aspect or another in just how siblings relate, how the neighbors get on nerves (in this case with a slight racial edge, it is a Spike Lee movie after all), and yet deep down lots of love all around.The Lee's inject a good deal of humor and warmth for a good 2/3 of the film, even when Spike moves the scene down south where Troy (Zelda Harris) has to stay with relatives for a little while, and Lee takes off the widescreen anamorphic process in order to make it a consistently distorted image. This is actually quite a cool move, if at first a little uneasy, as it goes in and out sometimes of looking like its distorted and then it will look like the characters and set pieces are skinny and such (the fate of the relative's dog, by the way, is one of the biggest, if cruelest, laughs in the whole film). At Crooklyn's best, there's a whole feeling to the proceedings, much like Do the Right Thing- and going back as well to the early work of Scorsese- where just a small section of New York city opens up to the viewer as being as vivid and true as possible that the lack of a usual plot doesn't matter much. Sometimes a scene might not work quite as much as another, or one of the many songs Lee lays on (and there are many, as it's one of the best soundtracks he's presented) overrides what could do without in the scene. But in general these are small quibbles.The biggest problem that the film has- and it's not without truth to Lee's real life- is the death of mother Carolyn. It happens as soon as Troy comes back from the south that she's in the hospital, and two scenes later she's gone. It's a sudden shift in the story that doesn't really feel as true as it could, almost as if Lee and his sibling writers don't know where to go once Troy gets back except to go towards sentimentality. It's still well-acted, particularly by Delroy Lindo, who overall gives one of his best performances to date as the struggling father of the family, but it's an odd jolt that doesn't rightly click (especially with a bit where a funeral scene is interrupted by what looks like a dream scene involving Spike himself, sporting a big afro, as a target of Troy's). And yet, I wouldn't stop anyone from seeing the Crooklyn, if they want to get to see some of the less politically charged and more personal and bittersweet side of Lee, and for those who have fond memories of New York (and TV or the Knicks) in the 70s.

gelashe Having grown up in Queens in the 1970's, everything in this film hits home. I am sure anyone that grew up in any of the 5 boro's can appreciate it.The music is what we listened to on AM radio, the TV shows, children's street games, sitting on the stoop steps, kids teasing their friends and neighbors are all something we did at that time. The Carmichael kids in front of the TV singing along to the Partridge Family "I Woke up in Love this Morning", Walt Frazier being IT when it came to basketball. How many of us sat doing the same things? The kids fighting with each other are brother sister typical things.But the film also shows the problems a family endures when financial strains hit. The father is a musician who wants to write and play classical music to audiences who can appreciate it. This becomes a burden when his wife is the one working as a teacher paying the bills. Domestic issues put a strain on their relationship as they get into who used to pay the bills and who's paying them now.Mom getting the kids up in the middle of the night for not cleaning up, you can understand her frustration being the breadwinner, mom and everything else. When she complains later on that she is tired, you will have to watch the film to see why.Sit back and enjoy a trip back in time when life was a lot simpler. Even Spike and his friend dabbling in glue sniffing isn't so bad compared to what is going on now.