Movies

Meet Me At St. Louis Candy Shop Doc ‘Crown Candy’

crown candy
By  · Published on November 17th, 2017

A legendary counter gets its legacy preserved.

The rhythm of any restaurant is in the sounds as much as the images. Capturing that, especially in something as visually engaging as a candy shop, is one of short doc Crown Candy’s great pleasures. There are montages that make you hungry, and then there are montages that make you jealous.

The workers at the 100-year-old candy shop and lunch counter seem to love their familial work environment with a passion that mostly died out when workers lost the loyalty of their employers. It’s nostalgic to see, even if it was filmed in 2016. There’s an old-school sense preserved in amber and bacon grease.

Directors Kamau Bilal and David Wilson use every technique in the documentary toolbox to convince us that this counter is something special and at the end of the nine minute runtime, we believe it. Carving a niche with a small business that serves its community and is served in return, Crown Candy finds its own sweet American Dream – and a doc ogling its success.

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Jacob Oller writes everywhere (Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Playboy, FSR, Paste, etc.) about everything that matters (film, TV, video games, memes, life).