Red Hook Summer
When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch, a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz, the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.
Dan_Tebasco@Dan_Tebasco
Starts off pretty good, gets a bit muddy in the middle with only the ocassional spark but in the end picks up again, with a change of tone that was unexpected but made it a bit more interesting.
Although in the end not entirely a religious film there is countless of talks of God and Jesus, in fact there are more scenes with references to one of them than there are without them.
The music is great but ocassionally I felt like they could just left the background silent cause it felt like it was pretty nonstop throughout. Spike Lee does have a tendency to overuse music though in general.
And some of the scenes (especially the preacher scenes) were too long for their own good.
The acting overall is solid especially Clarke Peters as the bishop shines, the kids weren't that amazing though (in particular the girl who played Chazz... 'Ooooooooooooooh!').
Overall it's okay, far better than 'Da Sweet Blood of Jesus' and maybe even slightly better than 'ChiRaq' but it's still far from Spike Lee's work in his heydays we're talking about here.
5.5/10... a weak 3/5.