Product Details

• Actors: Lawrence Ball, Wes Charles Jr., Wayne Collins, Luchisha Evans, Melody Garrett
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: January 20, 2004
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000F5OU
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,140 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Way Past Cool" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

WAY PAST COOL - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Land of the lost boys, January 20, 2004

By 

"burmajeep7" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Way Past Cool (DVD)

Based on the 1993 novel by Jess Mowry (who co-adapted his own work) and executive produced by Norman Lear and Milos Forman in 1997, Way Past Cool should now be remembered as one of the more prominent examples of the African-American urban-crime genre that followed John Singleton's seminal Boyz N the Hood. For reasons that aren't entirely clear... along with some that are... the film hasn't seen release until now. One could assume that the sight of 12-year-old gangstas swearing a blue streak, slugging malt liquor, packing heat and blowing away each other like a post-modern Little Rascals in a nightmare landscape (a vision made all too clear when one young thug adds sugar to his beer while watching the old serial on TV) was simply too much for Hollywood studio execs. Way Past Cool is also problematic on less controversial levels. The acting is uneven, the narrative is hard to follow. and the sometimes almost folksy soundtrack is jarringly inappropriate at times (though maybe intentionally so) issues which might be the fault of a first-time director. The film, however, is carried along by effectively moody cinematography that adds a dreamlike edge to its disturbing atmosphere. Despite some problems, Way Past Cool is still far better than the exploitation-driven, video premiere fare that populates the genre. Well worth seeing.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A film all American kids should see, January 15, 2004

By 

Josh Rynolds (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Way Past Cool (DVD)

Way Past Cool is a first feature from director Adam Davidson based on the young-adult best seller by Jess Mowry. It's about teen and preteen gang members in Oakland, but in tone and temperament it's far from the usual homeboy melodrama. The violence is here all right, but refracted through the eyes of boys who are still young enough to imagine their 'hood as a garden of unearthly delights. The mayhem and sorrow are doubly affecting because the kids, played mostly by nonactors, are rapidly losing a childhood they never really had. Davidson pays tribute to their dreams by imparting an almost tender lyricism. It's a magical little movie about a most unmagical subject.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sign of our times, December 14, 2003

By 

Lee Turner (Sasabe, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Way Past Cool (DVD)

"Way Past Cool, Adam Davidsons debut film, is inventive and intimate, and it brings these qualities to material that most filmmakers and opinion-makers treat with all-too-familiar images and assumptions.
Is this a movie about Black gang members (boys and men) in California? Yes and no. It is also about how we become who we are in those terrifying years between childhood and adolescence. What help do we get from parents and friends? When does loving them protect us and when does it endanger us? What happens when kids live in neighborhoods that threaten to violate them every day of their lives?
When a gang of young boys use guns to protect their turf from older gang predators, that old political question of means versus ends arisesand in a country (not just a ghetto) that has no idea of how to separate violence from "entertainment" violence. No other movie Ive seen so captures this blurring in the minds and psyches of the young: that giddy omnipotence alongside the puzzlement about what death really means.
We read about this in newspapers, we see it on television in the long-faced documentaries about the young and the breakdown of values. "Way Past Cool" is something else altogether. It makes us want to struggle with these crises and questions by looking and feeling more deeply. It turns life into art in ways that are truly surprising but that make heart wrenching sense."