It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The second part of this Netflix original picks up where the Get Down brothers left off. The Get Down crew had a major success winning a rap battle and now they perform nightly at their own club. Ezekiel 'Books' Figuero (Justice Smith) is straddling two worlds as he works on his college essay before going out to perform a show. Mylene Cruz (Herizen F. Guardiola) has had success with her first hit but now must manage a crude record producer and the demands of her father Pastor Ramon Cruz (Giancarlo Esposito). Shaolin Fantastic (Shameik Moore) tries to pull Books back into the music business while also trying to maintain his drug dealing business by selling at their shows.The villainous Cadillac (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) still insists that this musical movement is fiction yet begrudges the Get Down brothers success. Ra-Ra (Skylan Brooks) falls for a girl in the Zulu brotherhood, though the members don't support what that the Get Down's rap show is a front for the drug dealing. Dizzee (Jaden Smith) writes to his lover Thor in prison as he draws the story of the Get Down. History catches up with Papa Fuerte (Jimmy Smits) as he hopes to develop a part of the Bronx but the law is also threatening to catch up.Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com

If you're ready for a gripping story that elegantly combines poetry, suspense, music and romance, get ready! You're in for a treat! The burning Bronx is not only burning because people want to collect the insurance money but is also burning with hope: for music, poetry and the prospect of changing the world for the better. The series is a merry go round that visits various themes:honour, loyalty, love,sisterhood and brotherhood. But this ain't no sugar coated story! In the Bronx, there seems to be no hope left. People are facing a lot of demons: poverty, drug addiction, getting involved with the wrong people and some lack the support for succeeding. But, as the message written on the trains say: Where there is ruin, there is hope and if you raise your words, not your voice then things change. Even if they don't change for the apparent eye, all the characters change, and so the eyes through which they see the world...The well crafted story telling reveals characters that seem so real you could feel their breath, is masterfully spiced up by the poetry and the music.

I binge watched the whole series after i discovered it.Time - It really makes you feel like it's happening in the 70's. The clothing, behavior, politics, haircuts, music, colorfulness.Space - It paints the pain and poverty that Bronx was going through. Yet at the same time it captures the rich culture that developed because people had no other choice but to connect to make it.Cast - The people cast are incredible, Shameik Moore as Shaolin Fantastic really did a great job at portraying a struggling artist that goes to great lengths to make his dream a reality.Directing - Buz Luhrmann really knows what he wants and how to get there, and he got there.The first season has 6 episodes, and it has everything people like in a series nowadays, but most of all it is authentic. And at its core is the importance of music.It's a good watch and i can't wait to see what the new season or the second half of it is going to bring.

I think Justice Smith does an admirable performance in the first episode and he and Herizen F. Guardiola are together the only thing that have me grounded in this musical-style delivery Moulin- Rogue-for-hiphop play. If this was a Broadway show it would be spectacular and the other stereotypic and overblown characters could almost have been possible to forgive. But this isn't Broadway.With the recent decade of more or less "realistic" TV-series, in the sense that suspension of belief is possible while watching because of you're getting closely knitted to the story with lots of gritty and real details, Get Down comes off as a parody of an highly interesting musical era. Very little of what is presented is believable, if not for the details themselves but for how these are presented or told. That's clearly a stylistic choice, but it's concoction that doesn't gel well.I think some of the stylistic elements of the storytelling could have been acceptable had the attention to acting and presentation been better. It seems like what we get here is what the directors wanted to bring out from their actors, but it's hard to watch without feeling pain for how the potential is handled. The occasional overplaying mixed with good and somewhat believable performances is quite confusing even as it's clear there are some talent at hand. Maybe if you're in another state of mind can you make these disparate details come together, but if you enjoy the finer details of modern TV drama, as opposed to the fake feeling old TV shows typically brought with them and required that you had to accept that stern limitation, and you yet are open to new ways of storytelling, then chances are still that Get Down won't be something you can savour. The depiction of the night club owner and her son are too close to racist stereotypes and almost made me sick to my stomach. Details like that and others make classical Blaxploitation movies looking highly realistic in comparison. The Saxophone playing father, while sympathetic, also feel stereotyped even if you can accept that some fathers had some aspect of a stereotype with them in their persona or how they present themselves to the world. But there's a difference between a realistic presentation of that and a caricature. Where's the love for the characters created here? The street gang depiction almost makes you laugh at its silliness. One-dimensional at best as is true for many other details presented in the first episode. This is supposed to lure me in? Unfortunately not.The little glimpse of the roots of Hip Hop we get in the Vinyl TV-series are in comparison so much more attractive and real. That's a series with a story told with exaggeration, overplay and hyperbole, yet it's much easier to adjust to so you can enjoy the story being told. Not so with Get Down, where the stylistic choices get in the way of everything, including the story. You could say the same about Vinyl, but Get Down is actually worse.I had to turn off just before the end of the first episode, which is very rare. I have no hope for the other episodes. I really wanted to like this. Baz Luhrmann made me enjoy Moulin Rogue once even as I hate musicals, but where unrealistic storytelling works in a musical or theatrical show, the choices made here by the creators Stephen Adly Guirgis and Baz make me cringe. I'm out.