Customer Reviews

Everyday People

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A low budget ensemble film that deserves a wider audience. A character study of a Brooklyn Jewish owned restaurant (a neighborhood insitution for decades) that seems destined to be sold in the name of progress to shrewd developers whose plan to upscale a working class, on the decline neighborhood.

Employees and customers (many, regulars) must come to grips with personal family and societal issues that are all too real.

The acting is first rate, the script a winner with realistic dialogue.Caveat. The film has a "cheaper hand held camera feel" and a somewhat uneven music score but this is a solid piece of cinema that gives us the real tempo and beat of a Brooklyn the way life often is....full of hopes, dreams, racial and ethnic
diatribes, working class versus upscale mentality, the haves and the have nots and so much more.

I found this movie to be a bit off putting when I first saw it. So what is this movie about? I asked myself. The answer is a bit simpler than I usually expect and a bit more complex too. It is about a diner located in Brooklyn which is undergoing gentrification. The owners of the diner are expected to sell out to some corporate giants such as Banana Republic and Hard Rock Cafe. The area is run down and has been going down for a long time. The working class people who frequent the restaurant and work there are just on the cusp of poverty. Their lives aren't the greatest, but there is no promise that the area will allow them to better their lives. The diner is a symbol of some stability and safety. The script was written after several practices in repretory theatre. The acting is terrific and very enjoyable to watch. I found that the movie grew on me with repeated viewings. There is always another layer to uncover. A very nice movie and well worth a viewer's time.

I watched this movie last night 07-30-07 and found it to be very New York, the rating for it is way off and without a hint on the case I had no idea that the language would be so profane even when it was clearly not needed to get the actors point across. There is a scene where there is nudity again not mention in anyone reviews or on the case. Having said all that I did like the story which is really about life "any persons" life in any city where the tradition tried to fit in with the new and changing landscape of life. Would have gone 5 stars but the language and the stint of nudity dropped it by 1 star.

i liked this movie a lot... very interesting, realistic relationships between all the characters. i also loved that it gave me a little piece of brooklyn. :)
i won't give too much away... but i'm waiting for a sequel or television series. i would love to know the choices that these characters have made! :)

I saw this movie in bits and pieces when it originally aired on HBO and never quite saw the whole thing. It bugged me for years. Then I finally decided to find it. And I'm glad I did. Everyday People is a look into the lives of people trying to make it. The characters, portrayed by relatively unknown actors, are rich and interesting. I'm only sorry the piece is so short. Excellent little picture.

This is not your everyday movie. With a story to tell about the closing of a Brooklyn restaurant, it resembles a documentary in its structure - more a slice-of-life complexity of situations than the usual plot-driven story line with a beginning-middle-end in that order. Artistically the camera seems to catch the action on the fly, and instead of 2-3 central characters, there is a large ensemble, each person with his own particular conflict to resolve. Some scenes play out between people whose differences have you cheering first for one side and then the other. A mother, for instance, berates her poetry-writing daughter for not aspiring to a corporate job like she herself has. Each is right in her own way.

Set in a racially mixed Brooklyn neighborhood, the film also wants to open up the subject of race relations and racial identity. Not limited to differences between blacks and whites, it explores different points of view among its African-American characters. A business-suited professional carrying his cup of Starbucks objects to the assumptions of a man selling black ribbons on the street for young black males who are victims of prejudice. Later, each of them has his own unsettling encounter with some of those same young black males.

As the director and producer explain in the commentary, much of the content of the film was developed in workshops with the actors, and thus, like documentary, the final cut is the result of considerable editing. It would have been nice for the DVD to include another 30-45 minutes of these out-takes. A party of MTA workers is glimpsed in some scenes, for instance, and it would have been interesting to get their story. The commentary also points out the painstaking efforts to capture the ambiance of New York itself - things you don't notice in a single screening: the street scenes visible outside the front windows and the reflections in the display cases of passing traffic and pedestrians. Altogether it is a fine film, up to the standards of HBO, and well worth seeing more than once.

I would have given this movie four stars for many of the reasons already covered in other reviews, but I have to lower the rating because on the commentary track, there are clearly two people, but we only know that because one guy pauses and responds to the other guy. We don't hear the other person! Fortunately, the one person conveys a lot of info, but I bet the other person says interesting things. And it's annoying to hear him respond with no knowledge of what is being said. I wouldn't buy it for this reason.

In 2004 HBO Films decided to try their hand at the polemical subject of race in New York. Usually, this results in ill wrought PC crap like Spike Lee's 1989 fantasy, Do The Right Thing. Instead, they crafted an improvisational workshop concoction called Everyday People, about the closing of a fictive Jewish deli and restaurant called Raskin's in the heart of Brooklyn. And, the truth is, it's not a bad film. Is it great? No. Is it in a league with such classic New York films as Manhattan or My Dinner With Andre? No. But it is Do The Right Thing admixed with last year's Oscar winner, Crash; except that it's better written. Yes, it is a film filled with vignettes, and some don't work, but about three quarters of them work well enough for me to recommend the film.... My only lament over Everyday People is that the scenes that do not work, which get a little too speechy and preachy, seem to have come, from McKay's own admission, the improv process. Any artist has to have a real vision of their art. Without it, it gets ungainly and formless, which mars parts of this film. A better screenwriter could have tightened this film up into something excellent, perhaps even great, rather than merely being good. Nonetheless, when it is good, the film is quite good, and much better than Do The Right Thing or Crash. Sometimes, especially when you just want to relax and watch a `little' movie- one sans graphic sex and/or violence, that's more than enough.

Terry Goldman "Bluesjew4847" (Kents Store, VA USA (see below) very ably reviews this movie. I fully commend the 4 star rating. It's a wonderful production - far exceeding the results of any "workshop" process I've ever attended. The DVD Commentary is also very worthwhile.

However, I feel reviewers so far have concentrated on nostalgia for Brooklyn and the setting of the movie without giving due credit to first rate character portrayal - both by way of the story itself and especially the acting. It's difficult to take one's your eyes off the Jewish restaurant owner whose facial expression and movement are so true to his ethnicity and his role in the story.

Maybe, and only maybe, the language was a bit over the top but it's mainly confined to one character. However, the story also makes the point that such uncontrolled expression of anger can be fatally detrimental to the individual concerned. This is reflected in his past failures and his equally dismal future - if any attention is paid to the totally bored reaction of others at his group therapy session.

Having endured movie travesties that suck up public funding in Australia (refer to but avoid seeing "Peaches" for example) and, having studiously avoided gratuitous coarse language from Hollywood, I'd at least give this movie credit for "Bluesjew4847" (Kents Store, VA USA (see below) very ably reviews this movie. I fully commend the 4 star rating. It's a wonderful production - far exceeding the results of "workshop" processes I've ever attended.

However, I feel reviewers so far have concentrated on nostalgia for the Brooklyn setting of the movie without giving due credit to first rate character portrayal - both by way of the story itself and especially the acting. It's difficult to take your eyes off
The Jewish restaurant owner whose facial expression and movement are so true to his ethnicity and his role in the story.

Maybe, and only maybe, the language was a bit over the top but mainly confined to one character. The story also makes the point that such uncontrolled expression of anger can be fatally detrimental to the individual concerned. They are reflected in his past failures and his equally dismal future if any attention is paid to the totally bored reaction of the others at his group therapy session.

Having endured movie travesties that suck up public funding in Australia (see - or don't see- "Peaches") and, having studiously avoided the gratuitous coarse language of Hollywood, I'd at least give this movie credit for eschewing fashionable nihilism and tedious drug use.

As for criticising the depiction of nudity, it was so minor and integral to the story; I had difficulty recalling where it took place.
avoiding nihilism and tedious drug use.
As for criticizing the depiction of nudity, it was so minor and integral to the story; I had difficulty recalling where it took place.