Legendary storytellers Norman Lear ("All In The Family") and Milos Forman (director of AMADEUS and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST) present this story of life in the streets of downtown Oakland where drug deals and rivalries create havoc in the neighborhoods. This film was adapted from Jess Mowry's award-winning best-selling novel and shows the effects of poverty and hopelessness in America's inner cities.

Reviews

TV Guide - Movie Guide:

The lost boys:

Imagine Spanky, Alfalfa and the rest of the Little Rascals waving guns, sucking down 40s of malt liquor and using language that would set Miss Crabtree's hair on fire: That's the unsettling tone Adam Davidson brings to his adaptation of Jess Mowry's award-winning 1994 novel about a group of seventh-graders growing up too fast on the mean streets of Oakland. Pudgy Gordon (Jonathan Roger Neal), goofy twins Ric and Rac (D'andre and D'esmond Jenkin), sensitive rasta-boy Curtis (Partap Khalsa) and wise-beyond-his-years Lyon (Wes Charles Jr.) have grown up watching each other's backs in a neighborhood where walking to school can be a life-or-death adventure. On the first day of class, they're the targets of a drive-by shooting Gordon suspects was ordered by 16-year-old Deek (Wayne Collins), an ambitious drug dealer who's trying to recruit "The Friends," as the boys call themselves, to push dope. Gordon knows through the grapevine that baby-faced sociopath Deek has made the same offer to a rival group of kids, "The Crew," and suspects that Deek is trying to goad them into killing each other, eliminating potential competition. Deek never goes anywhere without his bodyguard, Ty (Terrance Williams), who just wants out; he doesn't have the stomach for murder and wants to get back together with his responsible junior-high sweetheart, Markita (Luchisha Evans), and keep his little brother, Danny (Kareem Woods), from repeating his mistakes. Gordon and The Crew's leader, Wesley (Dejuan D. Turrentine), decide to join forces to solve the Deek problem, and Danny tags along with his own agenda making sure that Ty doesn't get hurt. The shocker isn't so much that the film is about is 12-year-olds with handguns as it is that they can be such kids, laughing at Our Gang shorts on TV and worrying that mom will know they've been jumping on the couch. They're capable of plotting like military strategists to defend their turf, yet their story isn't so much about coming of age as trying not to. Gordon, Wesley and the others don't want to grow up and be like Deek. They know "you don't get to be 16 by being a fool," but they've seen enough of growing up to know they should hold onto the threads of childhood. Davidson's young cast is remarkable, engaging and guilelessly funny without being so cute that their calculated actions ring false.

Maitland McDonagh

New York Magazine:

Way Past Cool, a first feature from director Adam Davidson based on the young-adult best seller by Jess Mowry, is about teen and preteen gang members in Oakland, but in tone and temperament it's far from the usual homeboy melodrama. The violence is here, all right, but refracted through the eyes of boys who are still young enough to imagine their hood as a garden of unearthly delights. The mayhem and sorrow are doubly affecting because the kids, played mostly by nonactors, are rapidly losing a childhood they never really had. Davidson pays tribute to their dreams by imparting an almost tender lyricism. It's a magical little movie about a most unmagical subject.

DVD Reviews:

Based on the 1993 novel by Mowry (who co-adapted his own work) and exec produced by Norman Lear and Milos Forman in 1997, Way Past Cool should now be remembered as one of the more prominent examples of the African-American urban-crime genre that followed John Singleton's seminal Boyz N the Hood. (Actually, Way Past Cool was first published in 1992, months before Boyz N The Hood was released. JM) For reasons that aren't entirely clear along with some that are the film hasn't seen release until now. One could assume that the sight of 12-year-old hardcore gangstas swearing a blue streak, slugging malt liquor, packing heat and blowing away each other like a post-modern Little Rascals in a nightmare landscape (a vision made all too clear when one young thug adds sugar to his beer while watching the old serial on TV) was simply too much for Hollywood studio execs. Way Past Cool is also problematic on less controversial levels. The acting is uneven, the narrative is hard to follow and the sometimes almost folksy soundtrack is jarringly inappropriate --issues which might be the fault of a first-time director. The film, however, is carried along by effectively moody cinematography that adds a dreamlike edge to its disturbing atmosphere. Despite some problems, Way Past Cool is still far better than the exploitation-driven, video premiere fare that populates the genre. - C.S. O'Brien

New York Times:

"Way Past Cool, Adam Davidson's debut film, is inventive and intimate, and it brings these qualities to material that most filmmakers and opinion-makers treat with all-too-familiar images and assumptions.

Is this a movie about Black gang members (boys and men) in California? Yes and no. It is also about how we become who we are in those terrifying years between childhood and adolescence. What help do we get from parents and friends? When does loving them protect us and when does it endanger us? What happens when kids live in neighborhoods that threaten to violate them every day of their lives?

When a gang of young boys use guns to protect their turf from older gang predators, that old political question of means versus ends arises and in a country (not just a ghetto) that has no idea of how to separate violence from "entertainment" violence. No other movie I've seen so captures this blurring in the minds and psyches of the young: that giddy omnipotence alongside the puzzlement about what death really means.

We read about this in newspapers, we see it on television in the long-faced documentaries about the young and the breakdown of values. "Way Past Cool" is something else altogether. It makes us want to struggle with these crises and questions by looking and feeling more deeply. It turns life into art in ways that are truly surprising but that make heart wrenching sense."

-Margo Jefferson, Cultural Critic, The New York Times

Oakland's Urbanview:

Our Gang

'Way Past Cool' is too hard for Hollywood

The best TV star that isn't a Simpson is Bernie Mac, Denzel and Halle won the Oscars, and actors ranging in tone from Will Smith to Eddie Griffin aren't considered black first and actors second. So what's the purpose of the San Francisco Black Film Festival? One answer is in the local work highlighting the fest, which runs in San Francisco June 12-16. Among the films being shown is the west coast premiere of the still unreleased film Way Past Cool, based on West Oakland author Jess Mowry's scarifying collection of tales from the 'hood. Predictably, this adaptation's been finessed a little. It's been gentled by narration, and it's hardly as harrowing as the book, possibly because the film was shepherded into production by Milos Forman and Norman Lear (who was executive producer of The Jeffersons, cited here ironically). The slant of Adam Davidson's direction: to see Mowry's apprentice gangstas as The Little Rascals - only with drive by shootings. This odd metaphor mostly works, especially thanks to Jonathan Roger Neal's acting as Gordon, the Spanky of the gang.

"If you don't take the street, you have to take the alley," says the narrator of his life in the Oakland ghetto. We meet the five kids in a gang called The Friends. Though Gordon's the largest and most quarrelsome, the young shaman, Lyon (Wes Charles, Jr.), is the one we follow. Lyon's good enough with his hands to remove a bullet or perform magic tricks. A driveby shooting interrupts The Friends' day, and then the film cuts away to follow the reason for the shooting. It was the scheme of the powerdrunk shakedown artist Deek (Wayne Collins) who likes to take Polaroid photographs of his victims after he kills them. We contrast The Friends' problems with that of Deek's bodyguard, Ty (Terence Williams, Jr.) who is pressured by his boss's increasing viciousness. Ty's also lured into a more peaceful life by his girlfriend Markita (Luchisa Evans). Deek's latest hustle is to pit a rival babygang The Crew against The Friends, hoping they'll kill each other and make more room for him. Exploited and threatened by Deek, The Friends are in the position of the mice trying to bell the cat.

Director Adam Davidson won the Oscar for 1990's short film Lunch Date. He's discovered a lot of virgin locations - the refineries, the freeway frontage roads, the huge white cranes that inspired George Lucas to make the tenstory walking tanks in The Empire Strikes Back. Even if softened by narration, as it stands, Way Past Cool is still too intense a film for Hollywood. It features kids not quite 13 carrying pistols and drinking 40 ouncers - one, the Jamaican kid Curtis, played by Partap Khalsa, is seen pouring sugar into his bottle of Olde English 800 to sweeten it. Watching moments like these, you can just imagine the conversations of movie-business executives fretting over the problem of whether showing something means endorsing it... as if it weren't clear that children placed in hopeless life or death situations wasn't a tragedy, or that it wasn't our tragedy, in fact, as well as our responsibility. - Richard von Busack

The Little Rascals N Tha Hood

I have mixed feelings about this movie. On the one hand it is an interesting story... with decent performances and it's certainly worth seeing. On the other hand, it is based on one of the most amazing books about contemporary "gang" life that I have ever read. So, what I like to pass on to anyone reading this review is: if you liked the movie at all... GO AND READ THE BOOK- IT WILL BLOW YOU AWAY! A lot of people seem not to like the movie because the main characters are all around 12 years old and some of their actions seem a little unbelievable. Well, part of the problem with this movie is that it can't really get into the characters of all of the the kids in only 90 minutes.

On the plus side, most of the kids are pretty decent actors. (I think the little white Jamaican boy is a bit weak... but he's not THAT awful.) The kid playing Gordon is great... he's just the way I pictured him when I read the book. The older gangstas... Deek and Ty are pretty good actors, too. I'm not sure that the movie quite comes together as a whole... but it is well directed for the most part... with some really excellent scenes. (It might seem really hokey... but I really liked the scene with the rabbit in the hat near the end. Oh, and the scene where Markita takes Ty back to her place to see his son. And Ty's speech about his dad and the grape popsicles. Great stuff!)

I wish I could be as excited about the movie as I was about the book (and practically every other book Jess Mowry has written)... but it's certainly an admirable effort anyway.

--Hokeybutt

Stills