Review: Red Hook Summer
Remember my Moonrise Kingdom review earlier this summer, in which I confessed that I'd tweeted the fatuous "oh yes oh Wes oh yes yes yes" after seeing the movie?
Oh, Spike Lee. Oh, no. No (sigh).
Red Hook Summer, Lee's latest feature film, disappointed me greatly. To compare it to my reaction to Moonrise Kingdom causes me to worry that I am a privileged hipster elitist who favors the precious over the real. I'm not going to dwell on whether that's accurate and to what degree, but I firmly believe that even if that's true, it's not why I couldn't engage with Red Hook Summer. Lee's movie about teenagers coming of age has structural problems, clunky performances and an excess of speechifying. As someone who is a great fan of Lee's New Orleans documentaries and several of his features, it is a letdown.
The barely-a-teen at the center of Red Hook Summer is Silas Royale (Jules Brown), who prefers the nickname Flik. Without explaining exactly why, his mom sends him from his sheltered Atlanta private-school home to spend the summer in the rundown Brooklyn neighborhood of the title with his grandfather, Bishop Enoch (Clarke Peters), the pastor of Lil Piece of Heaven Baptist Church. Flik is using his iPad to make a documentary about his summer experiences, which do not look promising. His grandfather shuns worldly pursuits and orders him to work around the church grounds all day with teenage girl Chazz (Toni Lysaith), assisting Deacon Zee (Thomas Jefferson Byrd), who prefers to enjoy his wine and his Wall Street Journal.
The movie progresses slowly, with a focus almost exclusively on character development and interaction over any kind of plot. Flik and Chazz make mischief, Bishop Enoch preaches, Flik and his grandfather try to come to terms with some kind of non-combative relationship with one another. It feels like a set up for something, but nothing happens. An hour passes, and still there is no storyline driving the film, only characters talking and themselves seeming to wait.
And then finally, almost 90 minutes into the movie, at least 30 minutes past the point where I would have stopped watching the movie if I were not reviewing it, the catalytic turning point occurs. It is a strong and affecting plot twist, but burdened by such an extensive setup preceding it.
Admittedly Clarke Peters is so excellent and amazing as Bishop Enoch that it's easy to understand why Lee would shoot so many scenes of him sermonizing, which he does beautifully. I have been known to make the remark, in writing and in person, "I could listen to him/her for hours." This movie is a reminder to me that I don't mean lines like that literally. I felt like I had, indeed, listened to the preacher for hours, and I would not get the reward of Sunday dinner afterward.
But the weakest part of Red Hook Summer is its lead character, Flik, as portrayed by newcomer Brown. It would be a difficult role for any young actor -- there are big chunks of dialogue that I can't imagine any teenager speaking aloud. Coming from Brown, they sound like he's reading aloud. In addition, it's difficult to get a handle on his character. He's unbelievably naive at times and while we're perhaps meant to attribute that to his sheltered upbringing, it doesn't ring true. Toni Lysaith, as Chazz, often has similar problems with the dialogue but exudes so much energy and charm that she usually gets away with it. The teens' best scenes are with each other, slanging one another in a way that feels perfectly natural.
Lee and co-writer James McBride put speeches in their characters' mouths, not dialogue, and expect us to watch them doing very little for more than an hour. The supporting cast adds some interest -- Byrd is amusing as Deacon Zee, but again would have been just as good with half the rants. Lee turns up, usually in the background, as aging pizza delivery man Mr. Mookie. And Tracy Camilla Johns, as Mother Darling, roams the streets handing out The Watchtower ... I refuse to believe that this would be the fate of Nola Darling, however.
Before seeing the movie, I had heard that it was a scathing indictment of Tyler Perry and the kind of movies he makes, morality plays in which right and wrong are clearly delineated, melodrama covered with a thin layer of extremely broad humor. I can see where the last half-hour provides a grim contrast with the way Perry's stories usually work, and the ending of Red Hook Summer shuns melodrama for ambiguous realism, a welcome change. But first and foremost, Red Hook Summer plays like a low-concept coming-of-age movie, and without an engaging lead actually coming of age, it doesn't work.