Spike Lee's `Crooklyn,' . . . It's A 70'S Thing

WASHINGTON - Recently, my older son - who wants to become a director if he can't make it in the NBA -looked into the eyes of the family's other rabid film buff and grinned.

"You'll love this," he told me. "Two movies are coming out about black people back in the '70s. You know - when you were young."

It did sound like an embarrassment of riches - a double dose of movies about an era dear to me shot from a black perspective.

The first, Matty Rich's sweet-natured "The Inkwell," opened three weeks ago with so little fanfare that I was barely aware of it until a colleague raved: "Finally - a movie about blacks in which nobody gets shot or curses every other word!" Despite the film's lightweight story and lack of publicity, "Inkwell" opened strong, then faded.

More people are aware of Spike Lee's latest, the semiautobiographical "Crooklyn." The "Today" show featured interviews with cast members, including Alfre Woodard. Buoyed by Bryant Gumbel's chat with charming newcomer Zelda Harris, 12, who plays the film's protagonist, I eagerly attended a "Crooklyn" screening.

The movie, which Lee wrote with siblings Joie and Cinque, opens with sights and sounds sure to evoke happy memories in folks who came of age in the 1970s: little girls in tube tops jumping rope, Afro-ed boys flying rickety wooden gliders. Everything's drenched in sunshine and the sweet sound of the Stylistics. Yum.

At first it's a riot, watching Lee use the Three "F's" to conjure a visual feast of all that was hot in '70s black America: Food (sugar-laden lemonade, chips costing a dime); Fashion (bell-bottoms, crocheted tops), and Fun (Etch-a-Sketches, dancing with the "Soul Train" gang).

But Lee left out the most essential "F," one that would pull the others together, expand on them and hold them in place as a movie: Feelings.

It's ironic, but I've seen it over and over: Nobody can reduce African Americans' real lives and emotions to a series of stereotypes better than a black director, whose knowledge of our look and lingo can make a dangerously false package appear authentic. Lee has often complained, justifiably, about the limited manner in which whites have depicted minorities on-screen.

But worse than the fact that "Crooklyn" has no plot - and that this "warm comedy" features two brothers who spend the entire movie sniffing glue and a Hispanic grocer who bumps and grinds with a black prostitute in front of a child - is that only one emotion seems adequately explored: rage, loudly expressed.

Children endlessly degrade their siblings. A mom berates her spouse for not contributing financially; he hollers that she's unsupportive. Neighbors screech at each other in English and Spanish. The whole block verbally abuses a nerdy white neighbor. Such stuff happens - but is it all, or even most, of what happens?

We see several scenes of a supposedly loving mother threatening her children with "slapping the black off" them and "beating the brains out of" them. We hear next to nothing of her dreams for herself and her children, her love for her husband, her feelings about her teaching job. She never grades a paper.

But more than anger and negativity are overdone. In an interminable segment, Lee purposely sets his camera lens askew, making everything appear as though reflected in a fun-house mirror. Viewers have no clue why.

Most painful is hearing a decade's vibrant, rich music ("Tears of a Clown," "Mighty Love") used to make audience members feel emotions that Lee seems incapable of evoking with his writing and directing. Most shameless example: the Five Stairsteps' classic, "O-o-h Child," used to force audience grief over the death of a character we should have known and cared about far more.

But whatever Spike's failings as an artist - and I must give him his propers for "Malcolm X" and the masterful "Do the Right Thing" - the guy is a marketing genius. Already, I've seen "Crooklyn" T-shirts emblazoned with, "It's a 70's thing."

Maybe it is. But I lived through the decade. And while I remember my share of screaming siblings and parental squabbles, I also recall an ocean of familial support, love displayed in ways other than fistfights and wisecracks.

While some will doubtless love "Crooklyn," it wore me out. But I was already tired - of getting excited at the prospect of seeing a movie that should celebrate our collective past, the multifaceted men, women and children who have enriched all our lives. And then finding myself nailed to my seat during the credits, feeling disappointed, disrespected, disheartened. Knowing we can do better.

We are a warm, deep and complex people, infinitely diverse. Why do our own directors so rarely portray us as such?

(Copyright, 1994, Washington Post Writers Group)

Donna Britt's appears Thursday on editorial pages of The Times.