It comes off embarrassingly amateurish at times, but other times the sentimental moments will captivate you, but only for a moment.

| Original Score: D+ | Sep 8, 2017

"Red Hook Summer" has so much life, so much verve. Spike Lee always makes movies you want to wrestle with, even if the rewards this time around aren't as worthwhile.

| Feb 12, 2013

For the most part it's all rather pleasant, if somewhat aimless.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 13, 2012

There's little drama or sense of progression in the movie until the bombshell hits, and then it just whimpers along for another half-hour until the end.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 7, 2012

Lee's typically paradoxical statements on race and religion muddle the narrative, and his old stylistic tricks -- saturated color schemes, characters addressing the camera -- aren't exactly inspired.

| Aug 31, 2012

The story is static for about 90 minutes, then rises to action, but in a way that seems impromptu, either made up on the spot or ill-considered.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 31, 2012

When Spike Lee fails he fails big, and he goes down in flames with "Red Hook Summer."

| Original Score: D+ | Aug 31, 2012

Features Lee playing with fascinating concepts and working well with setting even if the final result isn't quite the sum of its parts.

| Original Score: 3.0/5.0 | Aug 24, 2012

Lee's latest film feels like several intriguing ideas in search of an over-arching story.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 24, 2012

This coming-of-age portrait provides one more instance of Lee as one of this country's finest cinematic regionalists.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 24, 2012

In truth, the film fizzles as much as it fumes. There is a kind of lassitude that sets in, even as it builds toward some kind of reckoning.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 23, 2012

It's a scramble, marked by the unruly variety of visual strategies Lee prefers.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 23, 2012

Here is Lee at his most spontaneous and sincere, but he could have used another screenplay draft, and perhaps a few more transitional scenes.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 23, 2012

This is an illustrated lecture - a jumbled, rushed cinematic rant. The ideas are there. The story is not.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 16, 2012

A movie that's alive and spontaneous and surprising is a rare enough thing to encounter-especially one that manages to address subjects as divisive and painful as inner-city black poverty without getting maudlin or preachy.

| Aug 10, 2012

The direction is aimless at best and changes tones with the weather.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 10, 2012

Spike Lee now seems to be trying to be the world's oldest student filmmaker. Take out the rookie mistakes from "Red Hook Summer," and there'd be nothing left.

| Original Score: 0.5/4 | Aug 10, 2012

Peters brings a magical energy to the movie's most laggard moments, infusing a so-what drama with a must-see performance.

| Aug 9, 2012

From a storytelling perspective, Red Hook Summer is an absolute mess.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Aug 9, 2012

Lee grapples with a number of urgent themes, but his approaches are often either too direct (we are repeatedly pummeled by the bishop's fiery preaching) or too circuitous (the verbal and visual meanderings are sometimes valuable, and sometimes not).

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 9, 2012