Aaron Loves Angela

Some time back, TCM ran a spotlight on New York in the 1970s. One of the movies that was new to me was Aaron Loves Angela. As I'd never even heard of it before, I decided to record it to watch and do a post on later. I'm glad I finally got around to watching it.

Kevin Hooks plays Aaron, high-school aged son of Ike (Moses Gunn), living in Harlem in the early 1970s. Aaron is the star of his school's basketball team, while his father was very good, but not quite good enough, which is why Ike is putting so much pressure on Aaron to succeed in basketball.

His team loses the game in the movie's opening, but watching from the sidelines is Angela (Irene Cara). The two fall in love, even though Angela is part of the Puerto Rican community living in Spanish Harlem and the Puerto Ricans and blacks don't always get along well -- and that's an understatement. Aaron's best friend finds an abandoned apartment building where they can all squat, or at least just spend time there where nobody will find them, and this allows Aaron and Angela a place to go and try to figure out their relationship.

It's complicated at times because of the racial situtation but more because Aaron seems to want to take things more quickly than Angela does, causing a good deal more tension between the two. But it's the movie's subplots that are really going to affect their relationship.

Beau (Kevin's real-life father Robert Hooks) is the local drug kingpin who seems to have found a surer way of getting money than any basketball player could. He's also seeing a prostitute who lives one floor down from Aaron and Ike. One of the drug deals involves selling a bunch of drugs to some white dealers who bring a huge amount of cash, something which is always risky. To do the deal in secret, they select... the same building where Aaron and Angela have their little hideaway.

Naturally, the deal goes bad, with Aaron and Angela hiding in their room to avoid being detected. After all the shooting goes down, Aaron peers out and finds Beau, fatally shot just like the two white guys, but with the briefcase full of money. Beau comes up with the brilliant idea of telling Aaron to take the money, since it's not as if Beau has any more use for it. Aaron foolishly takes the money and tries to escape, although he's going to be detected.

Most of the reviewers over on IMDb -- and there aren't that many reviews -- didn't care much for Aaron Loves Angela, noting that most of the plot threads aren't fully fleshed out or left hanging. I frankly enjoyed the movie despite these flaws. I felt that young Hooks and Cara both do admirable jobs exploring what would have been a difficult relationship even if there weren't any race issues at the beginning of the movie. The rest of the film is a nice slice of life of 1970s New York.

Even though it's not the world's greatest movie, I certainly felt Aaron Loves Angela was worth a watch.