Word: daze
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...School Daze...
...shoestring budget of $125,000 and built a following based on that movie's breezy, brilliant invention and irreverence. The movie allowed Lee to get a major studio, Columbia, to back him on his second feature to the tune of $7,000,000. But with School Daze, Lee may have disappointed a large segment of his newfound fans...
...School Daze is a failure, but Lee fails in the way that only a gifted filmmaker car. The movie isn't conceived on a simplistic or amateurish level. Rather, it is simply too ambitious and sprawling, too complicated and confused. Lee has a remarkable visual sense and a truly original way of constructing a story. In She's Gotta Have It, these talents came together to create an innovative, exciting new type of comedy. I doubt, however, that any moviemaker could construct a coherent whole out of the slew of elements Lee attempts to treat in School Daze...
More troubling than the vast scope of Lee's subject matter are his stylistic vacillations. At times, Daze is a Scorsese-type realistic exploration of Black life. Then Lee will abruptly change gears from a conflict scene a la Scorsese's Mean Streets into jazzy, upbeat musical numbers that could have been lifted from Little Shop of Horrors...
...have no doubt that Spike Lee is one of the most promising moviemakers of the last five years. School Daze is a mess, a complex failure which nevertheless demonstrates that the unusual promise of the director of She's Gotta Have It is still there...