Since Barry Jenkins appears to be lost – at least for the time being – in the CGI-heavy landscape of his upcoming live-action Lion King prequel, Mufasa: The Lion King (the script is “wonderful,” apparently), it’s been deemed necessary within the indie world for another filmmaker to step in and fill his shoes. In 2023, the call was answered by Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, executively produced by Jenkins, a cinematic tone poem that’s frequently gorgeous, but unraveled by its near-parodic obsession with shots of human hands. This year, it’s We Grown Now, another lyrical indie about difficult but transformative childhoods. With its Moonlight-esque violin score and emphasis on visual poetry, director Minhal Baig’s (Hala) sophomore feature is frequently absorbing, even if it can’t help but feel like a more pallid version of its obvious influences.
Baig’s story follows best friends Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez), two young boys living one floor apart in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex in 1992. Before the projects began to be demolished in 1995, Cabrini-Green was an extensive collection of mid-to-high-rise buildings, housing approximately 15,000 residents at its peak. With a complicated history deeply embedded in Chicago’s troubled relationship with poverty and race, Cabrini-Green has appeared numerous times in notable works of fiction, including the late Norman Lear’s sitcom Good Times as well as the 1992 horror film Candyman. While media portrayals often focus on Cabrini-Green’s eventual gang violence, vandalism and government disrepair, We Grown Now reimagines it as a child might: as a sprawling, multi-level world that Malik and Eric interpret through layers of tragedy, fantasy, memories and dreams.
At the center of We Grown Now is the real-life murder of Dantrell Davis, a seven-year-old boy who was the accidental victim of gang violence in 1992. Davis’s murder, which occurs off-screen about 30 minutes into Baig’s film, shatters any illusion of childhood innocence for Malik and Eric, who are now forced to comprehend dangers far exceeding anything they should have to face. The effects of this incomprehensible tragedy also extend to the adults. Both Malik’s single mom, Dolores (Jurnee Smollett, a standout) and Eric’s single father, Jason (Lil Rel Howery), are justifiably worried about their children’s safety. When Malik and Eric skip school to visit the Chicago Art Institute, it sends their parents into a panic spiral that results in the latter being grounded.
At a tight 93 minutes, the film casually traces the boy’s lives through this shifting landscape, contrasting the mundanity of typical school life and childlike adventures with the increasing harshness of their conditions at home. Dolores’s last straw comes when cops invade their apartment at night, ransacking it for evidence of drug possession. As her mom, Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson) puts it, “you have to grow, and the babies only grow if you grow.”
Shot handsomely by Pat Scola (Pig, Sing Sing), the film has a gauzy, nostalgic look that typifies its admirable resistance to be seen as a trauma narrative. Instead, We Grown Now is more interested in painting Cabrini-Green through the lens of those who fostered an eclectic community within its walls. Malik’s apartment is graded warmly and flooded with gorgeous streaks of light. Similarly, the film repeatedly returns to a visual motif in which the boys look up at the ceiling, imagining an expansive world of stars beyond their reach. Late into the film, Malik shares his dream of having a two-story house for he and his family to live in, to which Eric responds, “but our house has 16 stories.”
All of this conveys an emphasis on space, of an attainable world that’s within the boy’s reach as long as their respective parents can see past their own disappointments and foster the bright future that they hope for their children to achieve. Malik is obsessed with “jumping,” a schoolyard practice involving leaping after a running start, attaining, if just for a moment, the sensation of flight. In spite of being framed around a tragedy, We Grown Now is a largely positive film, which engages in its protagonist’s fantasies as dreams to be realized rather than crushed.
To Baig’s credit, she draws strong performances from her child actors. Remarkably grounded in the face of some difficult material, James and Ramirez give impressive performances. Unfortunately, Baig hampers these characterizations with some seriously soggy dialogue. When sharing the “secret” to jumping, Malik whispers in Eric’s ear, “don’t be afraid to fly.” Even worse, in two separate instances, Malik and Eric press their faces against the fenced balconies, shouting “we exist!” both at each other and the skyline of greater Chicago. However well-intentioned, the effect is trite and obvious. This dialogue feels like the poetic musings of a 30-something screenwriter, not anything a child would actually say. Overall, the film’s symbolism is too polished and manicured to be properly effective, resulting in a story that simultaneously reaches for honesty while also feeling studio-sanitized. It begins to make sense why this indie was picked up by Sony rather than A24. It’s a decent film, but ironically, it feels afraid to fly.
Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
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