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Crooklyn, 1994, 114 minutes, Rated PG-13
By Lisa Patrick
This unfortunately named movie is actually a sweet charmer. With a story
co-written by his sister, Joie Lee, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn is based on their early
years in a large, rough-and-tumble 1970’s Brooklyn family (with parents played by
Delroy Lindo and Alfre Woodard). Interestingly, Crooklyn focuses on the experiences of
nine-year-old Toi, presumably Joie Lee’s alter ego.
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As the only girl in a
family of many brothers, Toi experiences her world as something of an
outsider, but lacking the outsider’s inherent insecurity, she
radiates simple confidence as she processes all that she sees and
hears. We experience it all with her, as she goes to stay with her
proper, Jesus-loving relatives in Virginia one summer and returns to
find her mother critically ill.
Toi's sense of herself in the world
is clearly due to the emotional security her family gives her even in the midst of
overwhelming financial and medical hardships. Indeed, the entire movie is a subtle
treatment of the nature and power of family, while acknowledging how ephemeral it can be.
And for Toi, family embraces the immediate and extended families as well as friends and
neighbors.
Lee keeps his movie light with the
occasional whimsical angle (as when watching neighborhood glue-sniffers float along -
upside down). He made the right choice in including nostalgic references of the time: A
young, animated Don Cornelius on Soul Train, The Partridge Family and the golden era
Knicks. Crooklyn is far more engaging than others may have let on.
M
March 2000
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