On J List of Movie Reviews

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Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992)

Rate: 9
Viewed: 11/12, 9/20

IRT
11/12: Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. is a realistic picture that rings true in every aspect of life.

It's Poetic Justice meets Straight Out of Brooklyn. Ultimately, Leslie Harris makes a statement: "A film Hollywood dared not do." How true. And sadly, it remains the only one of her directorial career.

The reason why critics had been harsh is Ariyan Johnson. I can see why they hate her character, but that's the whole point. What she did is Oscar-worthy and a dead-on portrayal of many black (the race doesn't matter although) female teenagers who reside in the projects and the like and attend Title I schools. Chantel keeps saying she's smart, gets all A's, and takes calculus to justify her intelligence. Well, let me tell you a story to demonstrate how real it is.

I used to be a mathematics teacher at a high school that served inner city students (as matter of fact, you could change the setting of New York City's five boroughs to Camden, Trenton, Newark, Atlantic City, etc.; it's all the same to me) where I taught all classes from algebra to AP Calculus. My experiences with precalculus and calculus students were interesting.

Not a single student knew anything beyond 2nd grade math, and none of them could recall a simple algebra technique. So, it was a tough time for me to get through the year, trying to build a scaffold without getting a lot of hassle from students, their parents, and the administrators. The complaints were always in the form of "dat be fake," "da test dis racist," "wha da fuck dis?," etc. I had a lot of students who were barely failing telling me, "I alwa got all A. Da ain't right." Well, there were a lot of times I wished I could tell them they knew nothing about anything in math.

Truth be told, every student in the school I worked at was allowed to pass and then take upper level courses, regardless of how much they knew of the subject matter. It's how some of them got into the AP classes for English, history, calculus, biology, etc., and they always scored '1' on the national exams.

Why? Because they knew nothing. They showed zero academic discipline and had no idea of what the standards were. At the end of four years, at least two students got a full scholarship to a major four-year university simply because they were "outgoing," "social," and "mature," regardless of their academic performance. Race and low socioeconomic background were big factors in their selection.

I knew one who was exactly like Chantel who ended up taking AP calculus under me, eventually scoring '1' on the exam. She got into a huge trouble for beating a black girl nearly to death but graduated anyway and got a full ride to a top 25 university [psst...she never got a degree there]. That's the reality of Title I schools. It's virtually impossible to teach academics to these students who acted like they knew it all, did not adhere to academic standards, and thought (actually deceived by the school into thinking) they were succeeding in life.

It's no fun to work with these kids. Watching Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. forced me to relive the memories of handling these kids with horrible attitudes. Until Chantel loses it, she'll never amount to anything more than a minimum wage job. Why I think the film is a masterpiece is it's very true.

By the way, there was an interesting moment when Chantel's baby was dumped in a trash bag. This actually foretold, which I knew for years, an incident in 1997 of a high school girl named Melissa Drexler from Lacey Township, New Jersey, who gave birth in the bathroom during her senior prom and discarded it in the trash can before returning to the dance floor. She was eventually found guilty of aggravated manslaughter but served only paltry three years in prison.

All in all, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. is a realistic portrayal of what life is like for the inner city youth and, more importantly, how they think.

9/20: My eyes rolled a lot while listening to Chantel Mitchell about how she had it all figured out, and all I could say was, "Yeah, um...okay."

No matter how I feel about the girl, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. is an impressive movie that points out what's wrong with these know-it-all teens. The movie was made in 1992, and today, it's relevant and prevalent as ever. Sometimes, I search on the internet to see what happened to some of these people I knew who had a similar mindset as hers, and I chuckle because the picture ain't pretty.

Chantel Mitchell is a dime a dozen. I view her as a budding angry black female, and it's not a good thing. The vice principal hit the nail on the head when describing Chantel's problem: lack of class. She needs to learn how to act ladylike; otherwise, nobody is going to take Chantel seriously, regardless of her age. She's also a bullshit artist, and she making it in any math class, most especially calculus, won't happen. In case if you don't know what "I.R.T." is, it stands for Interborough Rapid Transit.

All in all, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. isn't everybody's cup of tea, but there's a lot of truth in it.