Just Another Girl

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992) was an interesting movie that was neglected during it's release at the theaters and on video. I saw a trailer for this film at my local art house cinema. I enjoyed this movie very much. The budget was shoe string and the cast was filled with mostly novices but the end results were very effective. A sad tale about people who'll be swept under the rug due to ignorance about life, their economic situation or the environment where people live.

A young African-American teenager wants to make it out of the ghetto and go to college and make something out of herself. But some questionable judgment calls, a dire environment and the out spoken person that she is slowly drag her down. Can she claw her way out of her current dilemma or will she just become another girl in the projects who tried but failed?

Too bad the director never made a follow up picture or produced a sequel to this film. I would like to see if she managed to pull herself out of the poverty mire or just became another disenfranchised person on the dole or in government housing. Sad but filmed with a gritty realism.

Highly recommended.

Just saw this movie in my Contemporary Film class...the main character is the human equivalent of fingernails being scraped across a chalkboard in slow motion...

While this is a very good debut for the writer/director, the end falls apart. The story revolves around a seventeen year old girl living with her parents and brothers in the Brooklyn projects. She is a good student, and spends the majority of her time working and hanging out with her friends. She meets a guy at her school, and soon becomes pregnant. Her decision to hide her pregnancy and the lengths she goes to while doing so take up the second half of the film. As good of a film as this was, I feel it really fell apart at the end. It wrapped everything up nicely, and denied the viewer the emotional payoff that the film promised. In the end, she did become 'Just another girl on the I.R.T.

I, on the other hand, do not agree with what one of the user's write stating that this movie was "just awful". If you have never lived in that environment or been around people like that, then how could you understand the movie? It might have not been a Matrix type movie but it had it's meaning behind it. Here we have a girl who grew up in the projects, family on a tight income, and deals with the pressures of teenage life in New York City. For someone to just say that it was plain awful is insulting..maybe they need to see the movie again and actually take the time out to try and understand what this movie is trying to say to our young people.

If there was one truly great thing about "Just Another Girl On The I.R.T.", it's the incredibly realistic dialogue. This fact is especially remarkable when considering that most of the film's cast haven't acted in a film previously, including Ariyan A. Johnson, who plays the protagonist, Chantel Mitchell. Not only is the dialogue funny at times and poignant at others, but it's almost as if you're in New York City listening in on real people's conversations. Any other movie with as low a budget or as unknown and as amateur a cast would have had dialogue that was wooden or may have sounded forced.

No one can critique this film without mentioning the character who represents "Just Another Girl", namely Chantel. Chantel is certainly not "just another girl", as she makes perfectly clear when she breaks the fourth wall. The best thing about Chantel, and what some critics (especially on this site) don't seem to understand about her, is that she is a complicated, round character. At her best, she's ambitious, hard-working, clearly very smart, and incredibly charismatic. However, she clearly makes some wrong choices in this movie which most viewers probably look at in dumbfounded awe. The reactions that Johnson reflects upon realizing those wrong choices are very familiar and genuine.

There is unfortunately very little written about Johnson's life and background anywhere on the Internet, which may account for her strong, believable debut performance in this movie. However, Johnson plays this complicated character so convincingly that it's hard to believe this is her feature film debut. She has since had noticeable supporting roles in two critically acclaimed features ("Bulworth" in 1998, and "The General's Daughter" in 1999), but hasn't acted in a movie or TV show since 2004. To say she is an underrated actress is indeed an understatement, and I would love to see her appear in another film sometime soon.

Of course, the plot is something which other reviewers on this site have been critical about. Although it is true that the plot is somewhat unusual, it's not exactly a bad thing when the plot of a movie can't be explained in one sentence. If anything, plot complication can be a valuable asset to a film, and "Just Another Girl on the I.R.T." is certainly no exception.

But then again, a number of Spike Lee's films had similar non-linear plots. This film reminded me of something Spike Lee would have directed not just because it had a majority African-American cast. This film drew parallels to "She's Gotta Have It" with a strong, independent female protagonist, the constant breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience, and the frank discussions about sex. It also reminded me of "Crooklyn" and "Do The Right Thing", along with a number of character-driven films by Jonathan Singleton.

I'm not so sure if this was a film "Hollywood didn't dare to make", as stated in the closing credits. After all, Spike Lee revolutionized black cinema, and is still no stranger to controversy with the messages in his films. Plus, the issue of teen pregnancy has been dealt with in cinema before (e.g., 1989's "For Keeps") and since (2007's "Juno"). So what Leslie Harris meant by that statement is unclear to me, and did actually come off as a bit cocky.

Still, this film deserves a lot of credit for its dialogue, characterization, and uniqueness in its own right. Ariyan Johnson brought a lot to this film which other actresses with her experience may not have been able to handle. It's too bad director Leslie Harris didn't make a follow-up feature, or even a sequel. But still, to make a mark on Hollywood with a film like this, even if it's only one time, is quite the accomplishment. I just wish more people could see this film.

I was fortunate to find a used DVD of this film in a local music store. I only paid about $7 for it, and it remains a priceless addition to my DVD collection.