Metacritic reviews

Crooklyn is not in any way an angry film. But thinking about the difference between its world and ours can make you angry, and I think that was one of Lee's purposes here.

This remarkable movie will haunt you for a good long time.

Crooklyn is a winning work whose charms far outweigh any pitfalls.

Crooklyn comes to the screen with an upbeat tone and a lot of heart. Beneath the surface of this deceptively simple motion picture lurks a keen insight.

Spike Lee's Crooklyn is a charming little movie. [14 May 1994]

On its own intimate terms, it's one of the most winning films on family life to reach the screen in ages.

Messy as the semiautobiographical Crooklyn often is, it succeeds in becoming a touching and generous family portrait, a film that exposes welcome new aspects of this director's talent.

Modulating from heavy to light, from angry to lyrical, and so on, the movie's an enjoyable, emotional symphony.

Crooklyn has a warm, nostalgic, spilling-over-the-edges effusiveness that is new to Lee's work. At the same time, the movie often seems every bit as high-strung as the family it's about.

Despite very good performances, this is anemic and uninspired filmmaking: shapeless as narrative, awkward and drifting as drama.