This is the first American film to successfully adopt the naturalistic style used by Europeans, particularly the French and Belgians, for at least a decade, and isn't it about time? Following three high school girls in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn during the last days of their summer break between freshman and sophomore years, it does what all good art should: it discovers the universal in the particular. Even though the girls' preoccupations are outwardly conventional--boys, sex, popularity, money, freedom, and clothes--we glimpse how their whole lives are being shaped, the universal interface between character and destiny.
The naturalism is whole, complete. The film breathes, stays in the moment, inhabits real time. The story tells itself. The medium and its artifacts, for once, are not the message. The film unwaveringly, truthfully conveys the childhood perspective of its characters; it does not impose its own adult meanings or morals. Details emerge of their own, are never pushed, and thus seem all the more real and powerful for their understatement. Even though great pains have been taken to capture the authentic social reality of Crown Heights, part of the largest Black ghetto in New York City and one of the most dangerous violent places in the US, the subject is childhood in the ghetto, not the ghetto itself.
Documentary footage of the practice sessions of a marching band, the Jackie Robinson Steppers, punctuate the film at regular intervals with an explosion of color, movement, and sound. Otherwise, the camera stays very close, very intimate, a patient, sly, and unobtrusive observer. The language is rich, spontaneous, the acting transparent. Some scenes standout, such as the girls lolling about, each revealing her deepest fantasies. Lanisha's confession of her acceptance of a death by random violence is the most shocking, one of the deepest scars of the ghetto. Her sharing with her mother her confusion and fear before the stark challenges of adult life is equally moving, and beautifully, unsentimentally affirmative.
Social realities are respected, not propagandized: All three girls are being raised by single moms, only one, Lanisha, has a father active in her life (and, not coincidentally, of the three she is the most emotionally stable and empathetic to others, and the one with the most self-respect). Two of them suffer from asthma, a disease disproportionately prevalent in the inner city. Gunfire, an accepted daily occurrence, only momentarily interrupts their conversation. Only one of the girls, Joy, feels hope for, feels she has control over the future, while the other two to varying degrees have already accepted despair.
This is by far the best dramatic American film I've seen in years. See it, see it, see it.

I suppose it's nice and trendy to see wonderful things in the absolute emptiness of a film like this. With the sometimes pointless excesses of many Hollywood films, we can relax and enjoy a scene devoid of explosions, foul language, and corny one-liners. Minimalism has its place, and can be very effective when employed properly. However, this film is not one of those cases.
Take the long scenes with no dialogue and dreary, sparse scenery. I'm sure that they must hold some great meaning and insight, because the implied message in shrouded in bafflement. The acting is poor... bland and pedestrian... and features one of the worst crying scenes in history (at the end of the film, if you can sit through it to the end). The scenery is drab, and the ridiculously long ending sequence of the girl walking through the barren park is as pleasurable as having a tooth pulled. I would call this anticlimatic, but as the film didn't build to any sort of climax whatsoever... not even in the "erotic" scenes... it would be untrue. I'm sure that there was a script employed during the filming, but with the amount of dialogue, I think it might have been written on a cocktail napkin. Basically, this film offers nothing to interest or amaze... no great story, no stunning insights, no visual drama, no excitement. Apart from two or three amusing moments, this film is a waste of two hours. A tragically boring and dreary film.