Brilliant and touching

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I think that this film being on IMDb's Bottom 100 list of the lowest rated films of all time is a bit sad. Sure, it's NOT a good movie but it's not quite that bad. I might put it in the Bottom 500 if they had such a list. This is a story about a teenage girl who loves to write rap songs and sulk. Her family situation is pretty bad--with a drug abusing brother (who she lets walk all over her) and a sister with a baby. There's more to the story than this, but frankly I didn't care much for any of the characters and had a hard time caring when a particular teacher of the girl tried hard to encourage her to go to college and pursue her dreams.The biggest single problem about the movie is that the characters are unappealing. While you are supposed to care about Cynthia, her semi-catatonic character was not particularly endearing. In addition, no one around her was particularly interesting. While a few story elements were good (such as the theft of her music), you just didn't care. It also didn't help that the film was so slow-paced and the characters behaved rather stupidly.The second problem is that there is a tie-in between this character and Anne Frank--a completely ridiculous thing to say the least! Anne frequently reads the writings of Frank and it almost seems, at times, that the film makers are trying to almost make a sort of moral or situational equivalence between the two! Offensive, yes. Dumb, oh yes.Perhaps this film might mean more to some others--particularly inner city teens (in particular Hispanics and lovers of hip-hop). But for this 45 year-old White guy, there wasn't much appeal. Actually, while I think about it, my 19 year-old also disliked the film...as did all those who rated it so poorly. Wow...perhaps this film ISN'T for much of anybody.By the way, the film seems to have a lot of very, very poor reviews as well as some that give it a ten. While perhaps the ones were a bit too low, the tens would imply that this is a perfect or near perfect film--which it clearly is not. While I could understand someone liking the film, the characters needed work and the film lacked focus at times.

At some point black artists and producers must understand that the image of the struggling black person in the ghetto trying to be a rapper or trying to get out of the ghetto because they are in a gang is so over done in America these days that there is no more room for another black exploitation film. The two worst movies of all time right now at IMDb both deal with this black/gangsta/rapper/basketball/hoodlum/fu ck the man attitude. This image fails for several reasons: 1) Filmmakers have already beat this to death. The best of these films like Boyz in the Hood, Do the Right Thing, Sweet Sweetback, Cooley High, even Breakin are now almost 20-40 years old. the ghetto is boring, old news, as contemporary as Tin Pan Alley.2) Regardless of what most people think, white people are not turned off to the image of a story about a black person in the ghetto. the truth is most people,including many black people, are tired of the image of the hoodlum playing basketball, rapping, being in a gang, and being inner city. this is because civil rights was very successful and now people, black and white, see a large black middle class. so they know this doesn't really represent many black Americans anymore. when a movie ad comes across the TV screen advertising the new hip black movie about life in the streets, most people sigh and flip the channel. no originality, done before a million times over, not really even representative of many black people.3) being a rapper in a gang and being from the streets doesn't carry the weight it did 20-30 years ago. now many people want to be from a safe, normal neighborhood. Black society has seen enough of crack epidemics and collapsing neighborhoods to want to celebrate gangsterism. the tide is turning against the black hoodlum image. Inner cities are being renovated and gentrified. black society is stabilizing.Simply put, we as Americans have had enough of the black rapping ghetto. It's just not original anymore. Rap is becoming classic rock. Please come up with a new and original storyline like what black people are doing in suburbia and how they mingle with other ethnicities there. this hasn't been done yet, although it is now a huge part of the American lifestyle.

Directorial debut for first time feature film director, Lisa France proves success out of the box. She was able to get an incredible performance out of first time actors young and old. It is not easy for a director to capture the perfect performance, but it's even more of a challenge when working with new talent. Lisa France could very well be the first female director to win an Oscar. I can't wait to see what she has in store for her audience next.

I saw Anne B. Real at the Maryland Film Festival. It is great!The lead actress (credited on screen as JNYCE and credited on IMDB as Ja Nice) Richardson is fantastic as Cynthia, going to high school in greater NYC, who dreams of a career as a hip hop artist, but who is surrounded by people who want to use her, or who tell her she won't amount to anything. She is fantastic. At the Festival, the director, Lisa France, told us that the young woman was an R&B performer, not a hip hop artist, and was not an experienced actor. The producer, who was there at the Q&A, credited Lisa France's direction as contributing to the excellent acting job by JNYCE.Jackie Quinones plays her friend Kitty. She is a hoot! From the first time she comes on screen you know this is going to be a fun movie because she's in it -- very loud and brassy and New York, funny and appealing. Every filmmaker, I think, hopes for a scene-stealer like this in his/her movie. What a find! What a great job! Many of her lines are improvised, since they re-wrote the script to give her more screen time, and they didn't have dialogue ready.Most of the audience at MFF was grown-ups, and the prevailing idea during the Q&A was that this was a great message movie for kids, especially teen-age girls (I have one, 16). I bought the DVD, and raved about the film when I got home. My daughter watched it and I'm happy to say she loved it. It's not a given that something that adults think is good for kids is something the kid herself will enjoy, but mine likes the film a lot. She's coming with me to see it again at a thank-you screening for MFF volunteers. Interestingly shot, excellent performances from a mixture of brand new actors and veterans, well-written and exciting! A great film for adults, and a great film for teen-agers of any color from any part of the world.