We Grown Now (#549)

The one year I lived in Chicago, 1978 to 1979, Cabrini Green was going downhill.  When first conceived, it promised to be the perfect public housing project, combining high-rise apartments and roomy row houses.  Located on the north side of Chicago, it would house 15,000 predominantly African-Americans at its peak but it's all gone now. The time is 1992, and this is the setting for WE GROWN NOW, a well-done, well acted and very interesting movie about two young boys, Eric and Malik, who find in one another reasons to bond.  It is wordy and perhaps a little too philosophical. and though it was only about an hour and a half long, it felt much longer because it dragged at times.  The settings in school, on the streets and in their housing, all of which looked clean and comfortable, a striking contrast to the squalid conditions I was aware existed there.  Although as one boy states, "I was born here, will live my whole life here and die here," the boys wander and discover wonders beyond their neighborhood, visiting the Chicago Institute of Art and other venues together. Tragedy strikes the community and one of the boy's mother takes a better paying job and plans to move the family to Peoria.  The sense of hardship and hopelessness isn't visually displayed, but you feel it throughout.  I can't say I liked it because it was too dark and depressing for this doddering old man, but I would give it a thumbs up as did 95% of critics and 92% of audiences.