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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A coming-of-age film unlike any other I've seen, 9 May 2004
I worked my way backwards in time to this movie, so my reaction may be different than that of reviewers who saw Cooley High when it was released in 1975. I had never even heard of the movie until I learned that the TV show What's Happening?? was inspired in part by it. Cooley High turned out to be a much different movie than I was expecting. This isn't just three young guys hanging around having fun, this is a gritty, honest, realistic look at the experiences of a group of poor African-American teenagers living on the other side of the tracks in 1964 Chicago. The two main characters are Preacher, played by Glynn Turman, and Cochise, played by Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs. In case you have the same questions I had, let me go ahead and give you the answers: Yes, Glynn Turman went on to play Colonel Taylor on A Different World, and yes, Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs played Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington on Welcome Back, Kotter. Preach is a smart young man who wants to become a screenwriter in Hollywood, and Cochise is a star athlete with a recently-acquired scholarship to Grambling. The two of them are also, to be frank, juvenile delinquents who engage in all sorts of petty crimes, use drugs and alcohol, and hang out with the wrong crowd (albeit that is pretty much the only crowd there is in the neighborhood as it is presented here). I tried to force the image of Raj from What's Happening?? onto Preach in the beginning, but it does not fit at all. Preach is smart, reads and writes poetry, studies history for fun, and even has a younger sister named Dee, but he is no Raj; he hardly ever goes to class and seems determined to flunk out of high school. Cochise is also no fan of school or studying, and he's basically coasting his way through high school, scholarship offer already in hand. I tried to like these guys, and deep down I did like them, but mostly I just wanted someone to sit them down and have a serious pow-wow with them; Preach's history teacher, played by Garrett Morris, tries but gets nowhere with his most promising yet most disappointing student. There is a lot of comedy in this film, and the guys can really be funny at times, but their dark sides began to emerge more and more as the movie went along. The thing I had the most trouble with was the way they treated the young women in their lives. In the end, I'm afraid I just don't understand these characters - of course, my own life experience includes nothing that gives me any real connection or insight into the life of an African-American young man growing up in a Chicago ghetto during the final years of segregation. My only real complaint with this film centers on a certain piece of dialogue; Preacher not only says something incredibly stupid, he says it for no apparent reason whatsoever. A real strength of the film is the music, as Cooley High features some of the best of Motown, with the music of both the opening and closing scenes of the film serving an important purpose in relation to the story. The conclusion of this film comes as quite a surprise, especially given the fact that it follows rather quickly upon the heels of one of the film's funnier scenes. It's tragic yet somehow life-affirming and inspirational at the same time, making this a movie one will not soon forget.
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