The racial tolerance of one and all is also tested, and some fail. He’s the voice of Civil Rights era outrage, not all that happy to be helping out these guys who, 60 years later, would be assailed for “cultural appropriation.” He’s bent on exposing their unfitness to play the music. “They’re trying to take us back to PASADENA!”Ĭlifford scowls, “Wow. Can they help? I mean, with Joey’s brother so determined to head them off? The night’s quest bounces from club to club, wending its way toward the famed Dunbar Hotel, historically the swankiest “colored” hotel in LA.Īnd we meet sibling jazz fans, friendly torch singer Ava ( Coco Jones) and her testy, racially touchy brother Clifford ( Nadji Jeter). “These cats ain’t got any rhythm…OR blues.” They go even though Joey’s older brother (Shane Harper) has forbidden it, and enlisted his girlfriend ( Gatlin Kate James) and greaser Tony ( Connor Paolo), who has a car, to track them down.Īnd the jazz quartet can’t be encouraged when the taxi dumps them off nowhere near where they want to be, and the first black kids they meet - Johnny Otis fans - laugh in their faces. The lads dash off, even though South Central was scary to suburban kids, even back then. It’s familiar, but try to remember the last time this “American Graffiti/Happy Days” cliche was trotted out in a feature film. And a plug on the radio mentioning that legendary drummer Pope Davis is appearing that night at one of South Central’s last jazz clubs has Joey hellbent on dragging them all there to see The Pope “before it’s too late.”Ĭaruso treats us to scenes that have become pop culture tropes - the local diner, with its pop-hits-packed jukebox, the greasers - high school poseurs who all happen to be Italian American. Rock and roll is here to stay, but these guys are boats against the current, especially Joey. Arch ( Uriah Shelton) can never get his lungs around a winning sax solo, though the rhythm section, Bud ( Isaac Jay) on bass and Louie ( Dylan Riley Snyder) on drums, is solid. He’s the most talented guy in the little quartet that rehearses in his garage. It’s 1959, and Joey Grover ( Braeden Lemasters) has never given up the jazz his dad taught him at the piano.
Co-writer director Gregory Caruso conjures up a lightly amusing quest comedy that finds its edge in the subject of race, its warmth in the lost world of South Central and its novelty in a bunch of white Pasadena teenagers clinging to jazz when their peers, and most every black person they meet, is already talking about it in the past tense. “Flock of Four” is a clumsily-titled but warm and likable amble through the 1950s LA jazz scene.
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