Product Details

• Actors: Ariyan A. Johnson, Kevin Thigpen, Ebony Jerido, Chequita Jackson, Jerard Washington
• Directors: Leslie Harris
• Writers: Leslie Harris
• Producers: Leslie Harris
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Miramax Films
• VHS Release Date: May 20, 1997
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302863694
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,206 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Sassy, in-your-face account of an intelligent, flippant Brooklyn girl who lives in the projects and dreams of college. Ariyan Johnson is captivating as the teen with attitude and a brain, but she cannot decide which should guide her. She wants a better life but finds herself taking a very hard road. First-time writer/director Leslie Harris put together a sharp, realistic, very funny account of life for a young black woman. It is rough around the edges, however, and is definitely hampered by the minuscule budget. This may not always be pretty, but it is consistently interesting. --Rochelle O'Gorman

From The New Yorker

The heroine of Leslie Harris's début feature is a black inner-city teen-ager named Chantel (Ariyan Johnson), and the film means to demonstrate that kids like her can't be reduced to a stereotype. For maybe the first three minutes, you feel the thrill of anticipation, a sense that you're about to get an entirely fresh perspective on urban experience. But after the opening sequence, which is edited to the hip-hop rhythm of a number by the female rappers Nikki D and Cee Asia, the movie starts to go wrong. As a storyteller, Harris moves to the beat of the same old drummer which usually sets the tempo for earnest low-budget independent movies; she leads the heroine, and the audience, on a forced march from lesson to lesson. Chantel is less a person than a counter-stereotype, and Harris uses her according to the didactic need of the moment. Sometimes Chantel is a positive-image icon, sometimes a cautionary figure; she's always a statement of some sort. The filmmaker's eye for the nuances of behavior isn't sharp, and scene after scene is ruined by faulty observation; Harris is in such a hurry to get through the lesson plan that she garbles messages that shouldn't be difficult to put across clearly and forcefully. (The messages that do come through aren't always welcome; a classroom sequence, in which Chantel argues with her Jewish history teacher, is unmistakably anti-Semitic.) -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Movie, DVD quality so-so, April 26, 2004

By 

Dorrie Wheeler - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (DVD)

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. is one of those early 90's movies that was easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. This movie really is a gem and director Leslie Harris worked really hard to bring her movie to the public. The film is a fictional account of a young woman named Chantal who lives in the projects who strives to graduate from high school early to become a doctor--and most of all to escape the projects. Chantal is street smart and sweet, but she gets sidetracked when she gets pregnant. This is a good movie to show in an educational setting but the language is a bit much at times. My biggest complaints are with the Artesian DVD release. It would have been nice to get some kind of commentary from the director. On top of that the chapter breaks are huge, meaning one chapter to the next includes several scenes. Another complaint is that the original film was small budget so the lightning is poor in some scenes, for instance in the scene where Chantal is in the park with Nattette and Lavonica you can barely see Natette's face. It's obvious there was no restoration to the film, it's just kind of there. I am glad this film made it to DVD. It is one of the films we show the girls in my junior sorority during our teen pregnancy prevention program.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Something to think about, June 9, 2004

By 

"mskiesha" (Chicago, il United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (DVD)

This movie really made you open your eyes and think about the consequences of sex. I saw it 10 years ago when I was sixteen and the movie really made me think twice about having sex. I just wish someone would make a movie like that in 2004 about
HIV/AIDS since people in the African-American community don't believe it can happen to them.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I SAW THIS MOVIE 5 YEARS AGO, December 6, 2001

By 

Sharee (FLORIDA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just Another Girl on the Irt [VHS] (VHS Tape)

THIS MOVIE CAME OUT WHEN I WAS 13, AND BY ME BEING A AFRICAN AMERICAN YOUNG LADY AT THE TIME, IT REALLY TURNED MY LIFE AROUND. I ESPECIALLY LIKED THE SOUNDTRACK WHICH I CAN'T GET MY HANDS ON ANYWHERE, BUT ITS ALL GOOD. I WOULD RECCOMMEND THIS MOVIE TO ANY YOUNG SISTA OR AFRICAN AMERICAN PARENT WHOSE DAUGHTER (OR SON) HAS GOTTEN OUT OF CONTROL, IT WILL DEFINATELY OPEN THEIR EYES, IT OPENED MINE BECAUSE MY MOTHER MADE ME WATCH IT.