Flick #10 of CINEMONSTER's MannVanuary Trois.

My List of Films that I'll be watching (or have watched) plus links to those Reviews can be found here:
Slappy McGee's 3rd MannVanuary - 2024.

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Coming just 2 years after "AMERICAN GRAFFITI", the comparison just can't be helped. It's a look into the life of a group of high school students as they manage their way through their own daily struggles. The biggest difference, of course, is that this is the Chicago inner city with an all-black cast and thus a completely different set of struggles and challenges than the George Lucas' film.

This movie is also set in the early 60's (about 2 years later than AG as this is the class of '64) and the music is amazing. Such good vibes from the cool tunes throughout this film.

The plot is... well, not much a plot, this is more a story of characters and how they act and react to others. Like AG, this story just meanders all over the place, from incident to incident, highs and lows and everywhere in-between. So you just have to be invested in the characters and what they do.

The acting is a bit sub-par, but the film is likable enough. It gets a bit more heavy towards the end, not really earning the ending... but much like life, sometimes things just happen out of the blue - earned or unearned. They just happen.

I can see why this is viewed as an important film, especially as a picture of the black community during this time in comparison to those kids featured in AG. It offers an alternative look at the world at this time, and that IS important. In fairness, I don't think the filmmaking is as good as the previous film, but it's still quite enjoyable and worth a watch for sure.