Crooklyn

It's a movie that's so personal, naked and vulnerable that you can understand why some of its humor seems rough, some of its visuals excessive. But Crooklyn has a quality not as obvious in any Lee film since "Do the Right Thing": the sense of a whole world opening, rich and real, before your eyes. [13 May 1994, p.A]

Crooklyn is not in any way an angry film. But thinking about the difference between its world and ours can make you angry, and I think that was one of Lee's purposes here. Read full review

This remarkable movie will haunt you for a good long time. Read full review

Crooklyn is a winning work whose charms far outweigh any pitfalls. Read full review

Crooklyn comes to the screen with an upbeat tone and a lot of heart. Beneath the surface of this deceptively simple motion picture lurks a keen insight. Read full review

Spike Lee's Crooklyn is a charming little movie. [14 May 1994]

On its own intimate terms, it's one of the most winning films on family life to reach the screen in ages. Read full review

While Lee fails to impose sufficient structure on his material, expertly drawn performances help vividly to evoke the family and street life of an era untroubled by crack or drive-by shootings. Read full review

Messy as the semiautobiographical Crooklyn often is, it succeeds in becoming a touching and generous family portrait, a film that exposes welcome new aspects of this director's talent. Read full review

Modulating from heavy to light, from angry to lyrical, and so on, the movie's an enjoyable, emotional symphony. Read full review

Both annoying and vibrant, casually plotted and deeply personal, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn ends up being as compelling as it is messy. Read full review

Crooklyn has a warm, nostalgic, spilling-over-the-edges effusiveness that is new to Lee's work. At the same time, the movie often seems every bit as high-strung as the family it's about. Read full review

With characters this alive, it's a pity that no one was able to build a more convincing film around them, instead of leaving everyone more or less out there on their own. [13 May 1994, p.1]

Both leads and young Harris make Crooklyn an exasperating might-have-been, especially given the movie's surprisingly affecting wrap-up. There's no dearth of human feeling here, but a dearth of craft. [13 May 1994, p.8D]

Despite very good performances, this is anemic and uninspired filmmaking: shapeless as narrative, awkward and drifting as drama. Read full review

Crooklyn is loud and raucous and occasionally cruel. The actors shout their dialogue, the kids trade insults and the movie has the strained, desperate-for-fun anxiety of a TV sitcom. [13 May 1994, p.C1]

Our natural sympathy for the Carmichaels is sabotaged by crude and careless moviemaking. Read full review