Gian Knight Ramirez (left) and Blake Cameron James (right) star in “We Grown Now” (Photo Credit: Sony Pictures Classics).
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(“We Grown Now” trailer courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)
Chicago has become a lightning rod in conservative politics and media.
To many, nothing comes out of Chicago but violence and upheaval.
But to people who actually know former residents of Chicago, the truth could not be further from that bigoted stereotype.
The entertainment industry has even caricatured the “Windy City” from the television show “Good Times” to the Spike Lee movie “Chi-Raq.”
But until “We Grown Now,” nothing has humanized young Chicago children in such a powerful and poignant way, showing that a person’s environment has nothing to do with a young person’s evolution into maturity.
More importantly, “We Grown Now” shows how perspective and vision can become the determining factor in whether someone rises from the ashes of ghetto life to something better for the future.
In “We Grown Now,” Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) are such great friends that they are practically closer than brothers.
In early 1990s Chicago, they do everything together.
The friends argue about Chicago Bulls stars Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, as well as Chicago’s native son Isiah Thomas, who stars for the rival Detroit Pistons.
They talk about women together, not the young girls in their age group.
They seek out adventure together.
The duo plays together.
Malik and Eric even brush their teeth together before sleepovers.
When Malik goes home to his mother and grandmother for dinner, he makes sure that Eric is good on dinner.
Sometimes, Eric joins Malik’s family for dinner too.
But as childhood friends get older, they sometimes outgrow each other if they are not careful.
As a result, close friendship could quickly turn into animosity if the friendship is not strong enough to handle change and upward mobility.
In “We Grown Now,” Malik is a dreamer, thanks to his mother, Delores (Jurnee Smollett).
When Delores’ children get tired of her meals, she uses imagination to help her children envision something tastier on their plates.
Likewise, Malik uses his vision of the future to see a better life for himself outside of the projects of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green.
Unfortunately, Eric does not see life outside of the projects because it is all that he has ever known.
In “We Grown Now,” Eric does not even know whether he believes in the afterlife because what proof does he have?
On the contrary, Malik wonders what the reasons behind life’s struggles are if there is no reward at the end of trials and tribulations.
Regardless of their outlook on the future, both Malik and Eric desperately want the world to know that they exist.
People from more affluent backgrounds sometimes overlook children and teenagers from impoverished backgrounds as if their socioeconomic status determines their worth.
In a way that will remind people of a certain age of Jesse Jackson’s “I am somebody” proclamation, Malik and Eric often scream to a world that is probably not listening, that they are here and that they matter.
Despite knowing that they matter, they are not often treated like they matter by the authorities.
When tragedy strikes the projects, the residents of Cabrini-Green are treated more like inmates than tenants.
Police officers rough up the residents for no reason, and without warrants.
Cabrini-Green residents must have identification cards just to enter their own homes, even the underage children.
And although many of the residents do not have many things of value, overzealous police officers looking for imaginary drugs in family homes, destroy any and everything that they see, with no remorse.
But despite the living conditions of the residents of Cabrini-Green, many elder residents remember a time when everyone in the projects were like a family.
They can remember people migrating from the South to Illinois in search for a better life for themselves and their children.
But somehow, all that changed throughout the years.
And the hopes of previous generations died out like many of the innocent residents accidentally caught up in a violent environment.
Despite the harsh realities of ghetto life, “We Grown Now” avoids the stereotypes and tropes that many movies fall into.
Yes, there is violence in the community.
Yes, there are broken homes.
Yes, there is police brutality.
Yes, there are hard times.
But even the single-parent homes are not at all stereotypical.
For every single mother or grandmother like Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson) trying to raise children with very little help, there is a single father like Jason (Lil Rel Howery) or an older sibling giving the youngsters the love of a million “parents.”
Writer and director Minhal Baig directs “We Grown Now” in a loving way, with adorable young characters, who are great kids despite many people thinking their zip code makes them the opposite.
The montage of still photographs of old school Chicago residents during the closing credits are like looking at old family photo albums of better days from the past.
The pictures include children playing innocently in the streets, as well as women and men, with Jheri curls, dancing in living rooms.
She even has some Lee-styled visuals when the children recite the pledge of allegiance at school.
Baig shoots that scene like Lee did for his “I Am Malcolm X” scene at the end of the biopic of the former Nation of Islam leader.
Even the corny and childish scenes at the beginning of “We Grown Now,” that might turn off some older viewers at first, are very profound once the movie culminates.
But the fact that Baig presents the children of Chicago as being somebody is revolutionary because in an age of right-wing propaganda permeating the media, one would think that the good people of Chicago were not even human beings, just animals looking to attack the good people from more privileged backgrounds.
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