Film Forum

U.S., 1994
Directed by Spike Lee
Starring Zelda Harris, Alfre Woodard, Delroy Lindo
Screenplay by Spike Lee, Joie Susannah Lee, and Cinqué Lee
Approx. 114 min.

“Semi-comic look at middle-class family life in Brooklyn, New York, in the mid-’70s written by Spike Lee and his siblings Joie and Cinqué. As well as hanging out on the stoop and battling with four idle brothers, ten-year-old Troy (Harris)—from whose point of view the story is told—witnesses the tensions between her mother (Woodard) and father (Lindo). Lee’s customary visual style and sense of street vitality are much in evidence in this fond, semi-autobiographical evocation of a largely vanished lifestyle.” – Time Out

Reviews

“CROOKLYN is not a neat package with a tidy payoff at the end. It contains the messiness of life. As it ends, the children are still children, and whatever life holds for them is still ahead.”
– Roger Ebert

“Lee’s fond evocation of a lost time and place, the Brooklyn of the early 1970’s, becomes a means of conjuring up intense feelings of loss among his film’s school-age characters.”
– The New York Times