SOURCE: Kauffmann, Stanley. “Old Times, New Times.” New Republic (23–30 August 1993): 30–31.

In the following negative review, Kauffmann criticizes both Poetic Justice and Rob Weiss's Amongst Friends.

Two new films raise questions that they don't directly address. Poetic Justice (Columbia) is the second picture by John Singleton, the young black writer-director who did Boyz N the Hood. Amongst Friends (Fine Line) is the first film by the young white writer-director Rob Weiss. Both pictures deal with young people—blacks in South Central L.A., whites in the well-to-do Five Towns of Long Island. Both are trite stories as such; both have gun play; both have ceaseless profanity. Few adults who have been going to films at all in the last ten years can be surprised by anything that happens in them. Few can be entertained by them, let alone enlightened. Few, I think, will escape some tinge of despair.

Poetic...