A BBC journalist has perfectly summed up how many people feel about Brexit

‘I think you might as well get Mr Blobby back on to offer his analysis.’

A BBC journalist has given perhaps the most honest review of Brexit by a commentator yet, in a clip which has drawn plaudits on social media.

Prime Minister Theresa May faces a crunch showdown with her Cabinet over her plan for exiting the European Union on Wednesday, but BBC political correspondent Chris Mason admitted in a piece to camera that he hasn’t “the foggiest idea” what will happen.

Giving his assessment on BBC Breakfast, Mason said: “So, where are we in this Brexit process? To be quite honest, looking at things right now, I haven’t got the foggiest idea what is going to happen in the coming weeks.

“Is the Prime Minister going to get a deal with the EU? Don’t know. Is she going to get it through the Commons? Don’t know about that either.

“I think you might as well get Mr Blobby back on to offer his analysis, because frankly I suspect his is now as good as mine.”

 

Many fellow journalists took to Twitter to praise Mason for his honesty.

The Spectator editor and Daily Telegraph columnist Fraser Nelson said Mason made an “important political point: no one has a clue”.

The Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn said Mason “speaks for all of Westminster”.

Mason himself appeared to be less pleased with his viral stardom.

Two 11-year-old boys navigate school, friendship, family and change in Minhal Baig’s lyrical drama “We Grown Now.” It’s an evocative memory piece, wistful and honest, and a different kind of portrait of a very infamous place: Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing development.

And, pointedly, it’s a film that might not have existed without Participant, the activist film and television studio that just this month announced it was shutting down operations.

Baig sets her film in the fall of 1992, a moment in which the promise of the 1940s urban renewal project had curdled beyond repair. It was there, on Oct. 13 of that year, that 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was killed by a sniper while walking to elementary school with his mother. A few days later, the horror film “Candyman” opened across the country with its Black boogeyman and white heroine, inspiring pointed critiques for its regressive racial stereotypes.

No longer the place of “Good Times,” Cabrini-Green had become a metonym for the failures of the system. A few years later, authorities would begin demolishing buildings there, the last of which came down in 2011. It’s now home to luxury apartments.

But childhood is childhood for Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez). And the biggest thing on their mind at the beginning is transporting a found mattress down the stairs of the high rise, through the streets and sidewalks to their playground area where it will provide the perfect landing cushion for their favorite activity: Jumping.

Malik lives with his sister, mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett, in a lovely performance) and grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson). The adults are stable, calm and positive influences on the lives of the kids, keeping them safe in their little enclave. Still, realities of their small world inside Cabrini-Green do occasionally creep in (or, rather, sometimes burst in at 2 a.m., when authorities decide to raid and trash their apartment looking for drugs that aren’t there). Dolores tries to protest and stick up for their rights but is painfully aware of her powerlessness over the ever-escalating hostilities towards them.

The death of a classmate sends everyone into a spiral. Voices from the outside suddenly emerge, from Chicago’s mayor Richard M. Daley and others vowing to clean up Cabrini-Green. There is a pointed disconnect with what Malik and Eric’s day-to-day is actually like, playing, jumping, teasing little sisters and sometimes escaping the dull nature documentary at their school to have a real adventure. Some of these moments land, especially the banter between the boys, but some are a little clunkier. These are the ones that lean more into whimsical ideas of play and inspiration (like when they decide to visit the Art Institute on their own and have a Ferris Bueller moment with the Seurat painting) than an authentic portrait of childhood. But also, why not show the kids being self-motivated to talk about art?

And it’s one of their last adventures before reality comes back to fracture their bond, when Malik’s mother makes the decision to leave Cabrini-Green for a job opportunity in Peoria. Their goodbyes may just have you reaching for a tissue — a testament to the two young actors.

Baig is a product of Chicago, though not Cabrini-Green. There are perhaps questions about who should tell whose story, but she has come to it with a palpable empathy and interest, which is all you can ask for, really. Why would we want to make rules about filmmakers stepping outside the narrow confines of their personal experience to tell different stories?

That care shines through in every frame (evocatively shot by Pat Scola), for the kids growing up in these circumstances, for the adults trying to shelter them, and for the magic they’re able to find despite everything. It is a delicate look at what life might have felt like beyond the fear-mongering headlines, with an elegant score from Jay Wadley. “We Grown Now” is slightly dreamy and stylized, too, but instead of a liability, it makes this very small story feel grand, poetic and cinematic — just like it would for an 11-year-old.

“We Grown Now,” a Sony Pictures Classics release in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago on Friday and expanding April 26, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “thematic material and language.” Running time 93 minutes. Three stars out of four.

This story was first published on April 17, 2024. It was updated on April 24, 2024 to correct the last name of actor Blake Cameron James.

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Jurnee Smollett in a scene from the film "We Grown Now." (Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Blake Cameron James and Gian Knight Ramirez in a scene from the film "We Grown Now." (Danielle Scruggs/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Lil Rel Howery in a scene from the film "We Grown Now." (Danielle Scruggs/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Blake Cameron James and Gian Knight Ramirez in a scene from the film "We Grown Now." (Danielle Scruggs/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows S. Epatha Merkerson in a scene from the film "We Grown Now." (Glen Wilson/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Blake Cameron James in a scene from the film "We Grown Now." (Danielle Scruggs/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Blake Cameron James and Gian Knight Ramirez in a scene from the film "We Grown Now." (Danielle Scruggs/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Blake Cameron James in a scene from the film "We Grown Now." (Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)