Cornbread, Earl and Me is NOT a blaxploitation film, what a ridiculous idea. This is a serious, beautiful, and powerful drama that is well acted and thoughtfully conceived. It also has a great soundtrack. Obviously, it is also highly underrated.Everything in this movie rings true to real life, so it is funny to notice that some other reviewers say the opposite. It seems to me their problem is that it doesn't ring true to the fantasy of motion pictures, rather than that it doesn't ring true to reality.Does the courtroom scene not seem realistic? Here is a news flash: the real life drama that goes down in real life courtrooms is chaotic and often bizarre. That's reality. Everything in this film felt true to me, and it rings true as a human story, leaving politics and ideology completely out of it.And speaking of the courtroom scene, the way the coroner in charge of the courtroom treats the people coldly and superciliously and then gradually becomes ashamed of himself as they behave with grace and dignity is TOTALLY TRUE TO LIFE. It doesn't even have anything to do with race, which is one of the beautiful things about this film. The black people in the gallery feel like it has something to do with race, and the movie makes you understand how they would feel that way, but it also leaves the door open for you to understand that from the coroner's perspective race really might not be any factor in the equation of his behavior. He's just trying to churn through the usual bullshit and get through the day.You don't know there are poor people who try to maintain their dignity and want to pay their way instead of signing off on a poor man's waiver? If you think that's not reality, you haven't seen much of the world. You don't know that their lips sometimes tremble when they reject the waiver and pay their cash instead?So much of this movie is really beautifully acted. Laurence Fishburne puts in one of the best performances from a child actor that you will ever see. Several of the adults are even better.To put it simply, this is a great film. The scene when the cops shoot Cornbread is as good an example of how the wrong person can end up being shot as you will find anywhere in motion pictures. The cops are afraid, they're doing something brave under difficult circumstances, we in the audience can practically feel the rain pouring down on us and clouding our vision, and they shoot the person they legitimately believe to be a murderous criminal running away from them. It takes them weeks or more to realize they were wrong. They aren't bad men, or even bad cops, they just made a bad decision under a bad set of circumstances.Or is the basketball element and the families involved supposed to be a caricature that should offend us? Really? Because it could have come straight out of the documentary Hoop Dreams which was produced twenty years later. Are we meant to suppose that all of the people depicted in Hoop Dreams decided to base their whole lives and personalities off of Cornbread, Earl and Me? Or can we admit that in fact families, neighborhoods, and characters like this existed in real life?Apparently Cornbread, Earl and Me is too real for some people. Or maybe it just goes over many audience heads. The beauty of its drama is sometimes subtly wrought, to be fair. But if you can watch it with an open mind it is an extraordinary film and well worth your time.Having seen it once as a teenager, and once again recently (many years later), I feel strongly enough about it to create an account to write this review. So there you go.

How many young Black men have been shot by police in the past few years? Ignoring the number of men who have actually committed a crime, some police officers seem eager to shoot up our young men. Consider the young man out for the evening with friends celebrating his bachelor party. Disgusting and they never get what they deserve. Yes it is political--what meaningful movies aren't? It is meaningful in that the 1974 movie just foretold what was to continue for years to come. It was rather goofy and poorly written but despite the script, the people in the movie are fine actors. I liked it because it showcased some of the best actors in Hollywood from that period. Watch it and judge for yourself.

This is a rather well done film with great performances. Where it drops the ball is on the overdramatic music that sledgehammers the emotional tone of the more dramatic scenes.It resists the temptation of villianizing all of the antagonists, especially the judge (which no doubt would've been portrayed as racist and corrupt in a similar film made today).Bernie Casey (who I'll always think of as U.N Jefferson in Revenge Of The Nerds) is terrific and it's too bad I don't see him in too many films today.Great 70's feel and the first appearance of Larry Fishburn makes this a film to check out.

A kid witnesses the shooting death of the neighborhood basketball star. The basketball player had been mistaken by the police as a crime suspect. The kid is subjected to harrassment from the policement involved to keep quiet about what he knows. The cops even go so far as to intimidate his mother. This is an early film appearance of Lawrence Fishburne's. He was thirteen or fourteen when he did this movie. The always magnificent late Rosalind Cash plays his mother. The film makes a sharp comment about the conflicts people have with the very people who are supposed to be protecting them.