SHORT TAKES
COOLEY HIGH (AIP) :: Billed as a black American Graffiti, which it's not, Cooley High is the best black movie since Claudine, but it's convincing for different reasons. Where James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll made you believe they were sickeningly sweet, the characters in this flick ride high (with laughs and a great Motown oldies soundtrack) on the contradictions between being sweet and nasty, without once convincing you they are either.
SHORT TAKES
COOLEY HIGH (AIP) :: Billed as a black American Graffiti, which it's not, Cooley High is the best black movie since Claudine, but it's convincing for different reasons. Where James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll made you believe they were sickeningly sweet, the characters in this flick ride high (with laughs and a great Motown oldies soundtrack) on the contradictions between being sweet and nasty, without once convincing you they are either. The all-suffering black mama intends to chastise her oldest boy but as he goes to get the belt she falls asleep waiting for him because she's pooped from working three jobs. And the hero learns through the senseless death of his best friend that he wants to keep his life together, but at the final funeral scene he walks off to college with a bottle of cheap whiskey in his hand.
