Given its title, you'd be forgiven for thinking that "Brooklyn" was a movie about lumbersexual hipsters, all named Zach, opening a single-origin, gluten-free artisanal mac-and-cheese shop in Fort Point, and the zany complications that arise when they realize two bathrooms are inadequate to serve the diverse needs of their multi-gender clientele.
Ah, that would be a movie to see, but director John Crowley's "Brooklyn" is about the good old days in that NYC 'hood. "Good old days" meaning, well, not the explosive race-riot Brooklyn of the 1980s seen in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," nor the scuzzy violent '70s depicted in "Saturday Night Fever." No, this is the clean, safe, friendly Brooklyn of the '50s, all hands-off dates, egg creams and kindly parish priests. You know, like in "Last Exit to Brooklyn."
Snarkiness aside, however, "Brooklyn" seems like some Disney gated-community version of the borough, heavy on nostalgia and light on muggings. It's an ode to New York City as the land of opportunity, where stolid Irish-Catholic immigrants could make something of themselves. Our heroine is Ellis (Saoirse Rohan), a young woman from the small town of Enniscorthy, Ireland, who lives with her widowed mother (Jane Brennan) and sister (Fiona Glascott). Bored with the town's boys and her part-time job as a clerk, Ellis decides to emigrate.