The Bronx, USA

I was looking forward to a "documentary" on the Bronx...what I got was a fluffy walk down memory lane. Other than learning that the Bronx is North of Manhattan I didn't learn a single thing about what makes it a unique or special place. All the friendship based themes could be applied to many places. Seemed to morph into a high school grad class story. Good for background TV while dusting the furniture.

The social media craze is really annoying. No sooner do you let someone be your "friend" then they start sending you more information about their lives than you ever wanted to know. "Here's what I'm eating." "Here's where I live." "Here's where I visiting". "This is my friend." That degree of self-involvement, self-importance, and bad taste has now made its way to TV with "The Bronx" in which a bunch of old guys from (guess where?) the Bronx walk you through their neighborhood. There might have been some value here if it wasn't so narcissistic nor, quite frankly, so boring. To be fair I stopped after about 30 minutes.

At best a collection of archive footage. Spends a ridiculous amount of time covering the topic of friendship, as if people having friends is unique to the Bronx. The rest of the time is talking heads calling the Bronx "magic" over and over. It's actually impressive how they managed to avoid covering almost anything that truly distinguishes the Bronx. Music direction is extremely corny. No idea how this made it onto HBO.

Clearly the producers and actors put their hearts into this in bringing to life the old and the new. This is especially so in the way they covered many of the students, whose journeys parallel those of the older folks when they lived there. It helps to be of a certain age in viewing this and even more so if you hail from the Bronx. A thoughtful, entertaining and ultimately celebratory documentary. I particularly liked how at the end-credits they updated the status of many of the students who were the subjects of much of this film.

I lived in The Bronx by total accident in my early 20's and I was really glad to find this. I laughed a whole bunch and I found myself with tears in my eyes 5 or 6 times too. Every single thing Robert Klein says is hilarious, and it was amazing to see the footage from years back. And to hear the stories. Great stuff HBO!