While O. J. Simpson stands trial and a big beef brews between Tupac and Biggie, Al Jolson’s great-great-grandson Jolie Jolson reaches for a dream he will never achieve. What this white, well-to-do, magnet high school student wants with all his being is to be like the cool kids from the Maple Avenue projects. He wants to be a gangsta like Henrietta, his pregnant-with-someone-else’s-baby girlfriend on the down-low. So when Jolie makes the basketball team, he jumps for joy. In his mind, he has finally made it; he is practically black.

David Andalman’s clever dark comedy Milkshake takes aim at teen sex and racial identity during a time when Netscape was on the rise and the definition of cool morphed from big hair and skinny ties to gang tattoos and baggy pants. Acutely observed and hilariously performed, Andalman’s debut feature sheds light on a mentality that has now gone epidemic. - S. F.