Review (VOD): RED HOOK SUMMER (2012)

RED HOOK SUMMER (2012)

A Spike Lee Joint

Dir: Spike Lee Scr: Spike Lee & James McBride

A quasi-sequel to the director’s accomplished Do The Right Thing, one of 1989’s most controversial and memorable films, Spike Lee’s independent Red Hook Summer unfortunately conveys little of the narrative drive and heat of the prior film.

The folks in Red Hook might comment on the weather and sweat a little, most especially during the Da Good Bishop Enoch Rouse’s (Clarke Peters) indeed rousing sermons, but Red Hook Summer can’t quite decide what it wishes to convey beyond a fairly typical and colorless adolescent summer romance between two teen actors with a severe naturalism problem. Other than the relative location and the two walk-throughs by the filmmaker as ‘Mr. Mookie,’ still delivering Sal’s pizzas (I suppose he re-opened in Red Hook?), there’s not a terribly similar feeling of kinship with the prior film. That the tone is by contrast relatively gentle isn’t a knock on the movie, but it does come as a surprise considering how much was made of its connection Spike’s most famous and challenging piece.

In this independent film, Flik Royale (Jules Brown) is a vegan, private-school educated grandson of the above-named Bishop, who’s a transplant from the Atlanta of Flik’s upbringing to Brooklyn and the titular Red Hook neighborhood. It’s summer, and Flik’s mom has decided the time is nigh for the boy to get to know his long-absent grandfather, and to expand his horizons.

But Flik’s an unhappy and reluctant camper trapped in Red Hook—he likes his nice Atlanta home and life there. He holds no truck with this New York experience, except perhaps as documentarian: the camera of his iPad 2 is rarely turned off. (Flik—get it?) Once Flik begins a semi-flirtation with the sassy and asthmatic churchgoing teen Chazz Morningstar (Toni Lysaith), however, Flik’s arc takes on a very traditional, though unrequited, teen romance that feels quite real . . . but for the two young actors portraying the characters. Both have physical appeal and personal charm but actors they are not, and stilted line readings do nothing to imbue the proceedings with any particular suspension of disbelief or emotional gravitas.

By the time the Bishop’s dark and un-foreshadowed secret is unveiled in the movie’s most riveting sequence (and that features Spike’s signature ‘dolly-walking’ shot to perhaps its most effective and creepy use ever), the movie finally catches fire to a certain extent by adding a layer of conflict not before present. All told, it’s a little late in the game, and is so intense that this reveal feels like a sequence from another film, and presents us with a character and a story that’s perhaps more potentially compelling than that of the protagonist.

By the somewhat unearned happy-moment montage at the end, however, it was easy enough to get misty at the thought of this young man’s summer ending, a memorable season in which he began to not only come of age, but begin to understand that maybe he doesn’t have life figured out to the extent he thinks he does, particularly when it comes to matters of love, faith and family. Press notes indicate that this is the 6th of Spike’s ‘Chronicles of Brooklyn’ series, and within his overall filmography, Red Hook Summer is a worthy if flawed addition.

Screened via the Netflix VOD service at 720p, the HD, mostly handheld cinematography looks sharp and appealing enough, with certain impressionistic sequences either shot on Super8 film, or else digitized to appear as such. As he has throughout his interesting and varied filmography, Spike uses not only far too much non-diegetic music, but at times seemingly inappropriate music, as well as indulging nonprofessional actors to no good artistic end. Overall, however, I give this film a cautious thumb’s up, mainly for those interested in this particular director’s continuing career.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hVD71F_saU&w=560&h=315]