Rating: 
Summary: Overly-simplistic view of culture-war - 1.5 stars
Review: This movie, at first glance, seemed promising. A sort of Romeo & Juliet thing with a Crown Heights spin on it- but it falls far short of its mark.The protagonist is 1st generation American Rastafarian, and ends up romancing a Hasidic girl, informally engaged. I'd give the story a 2 or 3 if it ended there. But the story, overly simplistic to begin with, was compounded by the negative stereotypes scattered throughout the movie. Clearly, the director, Marc Levin, has had no contact with Hasidism. Or if he has, he has had only negative interactions. We are not shown a single sympathetic figure in the entire Hasidic enclave, except for maybe the grandmother, who dies -coincidentally, the night that the girl and boy have pre-martial sex- a BIG Hasidic no-no. The Hasidism are portrayed as pushy thugs, who stop at nothing to get what they want, be it sex, marriage, or revenge. The other side is just as oversimplified. We are shown several Bob Marley caricatures- old men in dredlocks hanging out in the back of their stores, smoking marijuana and spouting hippy-istic nothings- but nothing of real substance. The narration is absurd- someone rapping about what we've just seen and making fake rap sounds with his mouth as an interlude. The ending is nonexistant- the boy is rapping his "masterpiece" about Brooklyn Babylon- hence the title- and we see a bunch of clips throughout the movie of him and the girl. The final shot is the girl pusing a bi-racial baby in a stroller. No resolution at all, when in real life there would have been so many more issues to it! The different families' reactions to the relatioship, for one:
Will Sol (the black boy) convert? Is Sara (the jewish girl) going to leave her community? Nothing. We don't even know if they get married. Very dissapointing. Hasidism have to suffer so many slings and arrows of indignity in films- either they are nonexistant backdrops, or warped caricatures- see "A Price Above Rubies" if you don't believe me. You'd think a Jewish director would have at least ATTEMPTED to get it right. I give this film half a star for some interesting background on Rastafarianism and 1 star for portraying a black protagonist as intelligent- possibly this film's only saving grace.
Rating: 
Summary: The Roots hit the big screen.......
Review: With the lead part in the movie played by Tariq Trotter(also known as Black Thought of the Legendary Roots Crew) and the score composed by The Roots, a coming of age of for The Roots true artistic talents. Tariq Trotter whose lyrical skill has never been questioned as an MC, but who can come off as very unengaging on the microphone, plays a very enegmatic lead role. Not stepping to far outside his boundaries playing a hiphop artist Trotter's first major role in a film is a success.
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