The best part about ATL, a standard stuck-in-the-hood movie that periodically remembers it also features a roller rink, is the occasional line of perfectly timed banter. Two teenage girls are rating the attitude of a guy coming up to the rink entrance. They dig it, they don’t, oh but wait they definitely like his car. [Beat.] “Let’s touch it.” “Ok.”
Hanging out is what the likeable cast of ATL does best, so it’s a pity they have to trudge through canned story arcs and, when plot calls, Dramatic Dialogue. In the absence of parents, level-headed serious-cool Rashad (Tip Harris, aka T.I.) looks after his baby brother Ant, who falls into dealing drugs for a man in an SUV with really big tires. A friend, Esquire, aspires to the Ivy League but may have to compromise himself to network. And Rashad’s new girlfriend, New-New, may be not be what she seems.
To his credit, director Chris Robinson, a music video veteran, wrings out the occasional moment and has an affectionate nostalgic eye for his characters, but it’s all tethered by cliché.
Opens March 31st
Hanging out is what the likeable cast of ATL does best, so it’s a pity they have to trudge through canned story arcs and, when plot calls, Dramatic Dialogue. In the absence of parents, level-headed serious-cool Rashad (Tip Harris, aka T.I.) looks after his baby brother Ant, who falls into dealing drugs for a man in an SUV with really big tires. A friend, Esquire, aspires to the Ivy League but may have to compromise himself to network. And Rashad’s new girlfriend, New-New, may be not be what she seems.
To his credit, director Chris Robinson, a music video veteran, wrings out the occasional moment and has an affectionate nostalgic eye for his characters, but it’s all tethered by cliché.
Opens March 31st
