OT: Our Town (2002)
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88% of critics liked it
(24 reviews) -
78% of users liked it
(145 ratings)
The Los Angeles community of Compton has become infamous thanks to news reports and rap music lyrics that have portrayed it as an African-American neighborhood brought to the edge of destruction by corruption and black-on-black crime. In 2003, a handful of students and teachers at Compton's… More The Los Angeles community of Compton has become infamous thanks to news reports and rap music lyrics that have portrayed it as an African-American neighborhood brought to the edge of destruction by corruption and black-on-black crime. In 2003, a handful of students and teachers at Compton's Dominguez High School decided to do something that hadn't happened at the school in more than 20 years -- put on a play. When it became obvious that the financially strapped school (which had recently canceled its football program) couldn't provide a budget for sets or costumes, the students did what money-conscious high-school theater departments have been doing for decades -- they staged Thornton Wilder's Our Town, a drama commonly performed without the use of sets or large props. But what would Wilder's allegorical story of life in a small turn-of-the-century Midwestern hamlet mean to kids in Compton? And would the inexperienced students and faculty be able to bring it off? OT: Our Town is a documentary which looks at Dominguez High's brave experiment and the people who struggled to make it happen. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Directed By
- Scott Hamilton Kennedy
- Genres
- Documentary, Musical & Performing Arts, Special Interest
Unrated,
- In Theaters
- Jan 14, 2003 Wide
- Studio
- Film Movement
Critic Reviews
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Megan Lehmann, New York Post
For a film about stereotype-busting, OT treads a very worn path.
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Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News
Emotionally involving.
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A.O. Scott, New York Times
[A] modest, moving documentary.
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Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
A whole world can be fit into 76 minutes, and that's what the splendid documentary OT: our town manages to do.
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Laura Sinagra, Village Voice
As the players themselves struggle with finding what Borek calls 'the line between representing ourselves and stereotyping,' Kennedy takes pains to illuminate aspects and insights that buck cliché.
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