Crown Heights

Just rented the DVD and saw/heard the movie in 5.1 surround. Since I was at Crown Heights two weeks before and two weeks after the riot in 1991, I can vouch for some of the movie's authenticity. Despite any shortcomings the entirety of this production is so grand it is a highly meaningful and noble enterprise.

Howie Mandel plays a legitimate serious role (wow!). He captures joys and struggles in Crown Heights that occur in that locale even until this day. The relationship between the Minister and Rabbi Howie - and between the Black and Orthodox teenage boys - is in fact realistic

both in their frustrations, upsets and cooperative unification in behalf of common aims. The final dance scene says it all.

And what's so strange about that? Blacks and Jews have worked well together before, and with the energy in "Crown Heights," they will do so again. As the Rebbe proclaimed, "We are all part of one community under one G-d."

Jeremy Paul Kagan put an excellent TV movie together. Now let's see an extravaganza big screen version. How about it, Steven Spielberg and Jeremy Kagan?

Peace. Love. Mazel Tov! ~ Dr.Cliff

This is an amazing movie based on the true story of Dr. Laz, the Lubavicher Jew who, along with an African American preacher, set out to promote tolerance by joining young Jews and African Americans together to create a basketball team and a rap group. I find it incredible that in the midst of the chaos and rage in the area after the Crown Heights disasters of Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenberg's deaths, they found the strength and inspiration to plant these wonderful seeds of compassion. Howie Mandel does a fabulous and believable job of portraying Dr.Laz and Mario van Peebles does equally well in bringing to life a character who is actually based on two real-life people combined. I highly recommend this film for both its entertainment and educational value.

I'm glad my DVD player decided 65% though the movie to stop playing the movie. Why did someone make this movie? It's hilarious when Mario Van Peebles drives up in his creepy child stealing van and says one word to a group of looters and they run like antelope. I think whoever wrote the script to this movie was high on drugs that nobody knows about because they don't exist anymore. This movie was made on a computer running windows 95. It doesn't really make sense, but when I saw that Jewish kid dancing and rapping, I felt violated and uncomfortable. I took the DVD out and returned it to the store. Rock on London, Rock on Chicago, Wheaties the breakfast of champion.

To be fair, a good intentioned, but laughable and superficial effort to try to find common threads between Chasidim and Black street youth in Brooklyn. Portrayal of each group is unrealistic and simultaneously --and paradoxically-- grossly stereotypical. The depiction by the actors of the Jews was tailor made for an audience that knows nothing about Chasidic Jews; their portrayal was not, not believable. All the clichés are touched upon: Jews are exclusive; blacks are oversexed and violent. But don't worry because Rap Music is gonna save the day by uniting Jews with Black, teaching all to "increase the peace." Puh-leaze. Dialogue is strained and awkward. Storyline shallow and amateur, but again, topical and well intentioned. Honeslty, I cringed watching this filmed-in-one-week movie, but watched out of curiosity -- the way one watches an automobile accident. Painfully, someone thought enough of this to present it as a film. But there is one memorable moment: the protagonist black boy calls the protagonist Chasid, "Boychick" in friendship. By the way, shouldn't this movie have been done like ten years ago? -Jon

I got to see this movie on Showtime early one Sunday morning. For a Howie Mandell movie, I was expecting a few jokes and some physical comedy. What I got instead was a serious film dealing with race and tolerance. I was lost with the hip hop music because the early days of rap and hip hop (street style) music was more of a "flavor of the month" than a real genre of art.

Overall, a nice little film but this is far from anything great or worth watching over and over and over again. The acting is as good as its dialogue....still, the overall message was worth getting a the movie was worth watching once. I consider this one of Howie's serious films to remind the critics that he's Jewish and a good actor. For that reason, if it be true, I think the movie was a success.