‘Crooklyn’s’ Cruel to Animals and Viewers

I have just seen Spike Lee’s new film, “Crooklyn,” and wish that I had been warned to avoid it because of the gratuitous acts of animal cruelty Lee felt impelled to include.

Whether the movie, in general, is good or bad was for your reviewer to discuss (“A Warm and Fuzzy Spike Lee,” Calendar, May 13). But I wish the review had warned about the cruelty to animals that is so casually depicted in the film.

Allow me to warn others who will find it revolting to see children open a gate to steal a big contented cat from its owner’s front yard and then violently swing the cat (a simulation, I hope) by its tail and hurl it at other kids.

This brief act of trespass, theft and torture is presented as blandly as Lee presents the shots of children playing tag and hopscotch, jumping rope and singing. Impressionable children seeing this on the movie screen might consider such cruelty is as acceptable “fun” as any of the street games they are shown at the same time.

Later in the movie, a little dog is found dead, smothered in a foldaway sofa bed while its distraught owner has been searching for it. True, the harmless little dog, Queenie, had yapped a lot. True, its devoted owner is an unsympathetic character.

Even so, will somebody explain to me why Queenie’s painful death and its owner’s grief brought cheers, loud applause and gales of laughter from the audience at the screening I attended in Westwood? Will somebody tell me how this and the cat torture scene helped this movie?

Can I just give a bit of advice to Spike Lee? Mr. Lee, you want to be a great director?

Get a heart.

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