Can Spike Lee's 'She's Gotta Have It' reboot keep up with the strong TV women he helped make possible?

DeWanda Wise in Spike Lee's new Netflix series, "She's Gotta Have It." (David Lee / Netflix)

Spike Lee’s Netflix reboot of his 1986 breakthrough film, “She’s Gotta Have It,” occupies an odd space of being both timely and dated.

It arrives as women’s issues and bigotry are front and center in the media and entertainment, but also draws from an era when ideas about sexual harassment, gender roles and systemic racism were less explored on screen.

The 10-episode series, premiering Thursday, follows the same basic story of Lee’s original film: Aspiring Brooklyn artist Nola Darling is on a quest to define herself, her sexuality and her womanhood in the face of societal sexism, racism and the smothering demands of her three lovers.

Lee, 60, who directed the entire series and wrote the first and last episodes, now must compete with contemporary productions that his early work helped inspire.

Namely, Issa Rae’s “Insecure.” Her HBO masterpiece (starring, co-created and written by Rae) captures the humor, pain and complexity of four black women facing the uncertainty of their 30s in the rapidly changing environs of Los Angeles and post-Trump America.

The Netflix comedy/drama, however, is too busy updating an old story for a new generation to pay attention to what’s happening on that other platform and coast.

The opening sequence for each 30-minute episode of “She’s Gotta Have It” is a moving and powerful montage of photos from Brooklyn way back when (pre-1990?), and now. Those few seconds convey the gentrification and changing face of Brooklyn so succinctly that each installment starts with a strong underpinning of local history and culture.

But the first four episodes reviewed here struggle to stay current, though they all have hashtagged titles — #LuvIzLuv, #DaJumpOff — and interludes that indicate Nola (DeWanda Wise) is a new woman in a new era.

Source: latimes

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