Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Disappointment for a huge fan!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

... are explored here. The cultural references - clothes, dancing, music - are somewhat dated, but then this is not just another teen movie. The story is told through the eyes of Chantel Mitchell, a 17 year old girl living in Brooklyn with her parents and much younger brothers. Dad works the night shift, mom works days, and even then they work paycheck to paycheck. They have just enough overlap in schedule that they argue just before dad gets up and after mom goes to bed, so Chantel knows all of their problems. She is a smart girl, she has the grades, she has the plans - she wants to go to college and on to medical school. Financially, you just wonder how that is going to be possible, but she has drive and you are pulling for her. But she also has a mouth on her that gets her into trouble at work when she waits on entitled yuppies and at school when she wants to disrupt the teacher's lesson plan and get a more Afro-centric conversation going. Even her African American authority figures such as the principal say things like "a young lady should do this" or "a young lady should do that"...viewpoints that probably nobody even of my generation - I'm 57 - wouldn't have rolled their eyes at when 17.Chantel is never going to make the mistakes her parents made and get trapped here. There is just one problem. Chantel is 17, just like her parents were 17 once, just like her parents who probably had parents that were too busy scraping a living together to give the close supervision and guidance needed, and thus she gets mixed up with a more well off boy, has only word of mouth and borrowed birth control pills to go on when it comes to sex, and she gets pregnant.When Chantel discovers her condition she acts like so many teenagers - like this is a case of acne that will go away if she just ignores it. Then when it doesn't just go away she comes up with very unclever ways to hide her condition from he parents. Ways that are so unclever they are hilarious. Any parent would notice what was going on if they weren't so busy fighting the daily business of making a living as Chantel's parents are doing. So they don't notice.I'll let you watch and see how this turns out. There is one thing that Chantel does at the end that made me dislike her for just a minute, and then I realized that this was just part of the panic and denial that she had been in for nine months. She just needed to get a grip.This one is not well known but I think it is worth your time. If anything it shows you that just telling the African American community that they need to "clean up their act" is much easier said than done.

I feel the current comment listed does not do this film justice. The audience is presented with, Chantel, a woman of the projects. Throughout the entire film we see that she wants to get out of that life and move on to college. However, she becomes trapped and as a young woman tries to conceal her obstacle. Chantel is a real woman in this film and neither she nor her problem is not "sugar coated." The viewer gets an eye opening glimpse at what these women are up against. I enjoyed this film because Chantel continues to hold on to her dream once she has overcome her fear/obstacle, her pregnancy. I would like to further add that a connection with Chantel can not be formed by all, because many do not experience the life of a Black Woman in the Projects of NYC-Brooklyn!

The actress playing the main character had some charisma, but otherwise the acting is really terrible, even for an indy. The actors themselves are clearly inexperienced, but the director apparently didn't know how to work with them to pick up the pace, and probably didn't have the budget to do more than one or two takes. The cliche dialogue didn't help much either.

Let me say that I would imagine that I am the target audience for this film. By this, I mean that I am not a young, economically challenged African-American woman living in an urban area, since I would imagine that that particular demographic does not need to be made aware of the difficulties they face on a day to day basis. That said, I did not feel Leslie Harris did the best job in trying to bring these issues across. As others have said, I found the main character to be thoroughly unpleasant. While flawed characters can be more interesting to watch, their character strengths should be far less superficial for them to merit any sympathy or empathy from the viewer (i.e., just being intelligent and ambitious is not enough for me to like a character).Also of note is the amateurish acting, which truly detracts from the viewing experience. The documentary-style camerawork could have added to the feeling of verisimilitude, but coupled with the acting, it constantly draws attention to the fact that the viewer is watching a film. I understand certain allowances must be made when watching low-budget independent films, but the filmmakers should have realized that today's audiences are spoiled and have little patience for elements that feel unnatural.I also take issue with the film's ending, which rings completely false in light of everything that has preceded it. One person compared it to the seemingly tacked-on happy endings from melodramas of the past. The problem with that logic is the fact that those endings were imposed by the studio and sometimes by censors. This is an independent film (one "Hollywood dared not do") and can take the risk of having the ending that fits best.I have heard it suggested that all the elements I have called attention to were aesthetic choices by the filmmakers. To that, I must say that, if this is so, it causes the film to be rather self-defeating. To call attention to the film's artifice, thereby pulling the viewer out of the story, causes them to view it as just another light show on a screen. It can be safely viewed as just a film, all thoughts of it depicting reality left aside.Films are often attacked for being too manipulative. Here is a film that is not manipulative enough. If a filmmaker wants an audience to be able to identify with a situation she/he should take great pains to make certain they are not taken out of the film throughout. While I admire the fact that Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. tries to show me a world I have minimal knowledge of, it did not involve me enough to give the subject matter much of a second thought after the credits rolled. Instead, I just kept thinking about its quality as a film.