Rating: 
Summary: Spike Lee holds you captive for the full feature
Review: Bamboozled is an incredible movie. It forces issues that have been latent and residing in the unfortunate margins of society. This is true and real and needs to be seen by everybody. I had the fortune to meet with Spike Lee the day I viewed Bamboozled and realized what a sincere person he is and how seriously he takes productions. Also, he has a silly side. A great man and a great movie. I'm not intentionally plugging him for president, but both his life and work have made a big impression on me...one that I will never forget. One that I will not forget to pass on as Lee passes on the knowledge.
Rating:
Summary: spike leez a genius
Review: the 6th bestest film to come out of 2000!! thuis fimn is just gtreatz. the acting by damon wayzns was amaing. who thought thatz hez beez able to act soo good?? i didn't. everyone ois perfectly casyt in this outstanding movie. i love everyt minute of it. spike lee isz a genius!!....peace
Rating:
Summary: Job Well Done
Review: Not controversial, the issues that drive this film are real and undisputed. Thought provoking is the most accurate way to define this work. Wherever one stands on the issues, this film forces one to think intensely and critically regarding these issues. This is unqeustionably a quality work.
Rating:
Summary: Spike Does It Again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: To be sure, let me say at the outset, that in many instances this can be VERY disturbing to watch, especially for Americans given the history of the races here. And Spike, (GOD I love him)still continues to work you. You tend to watch this as you would a horrible accident....you simply cannot turn away but it is entirely too painful to watch. But I understand exactly what he was trying to say and agree wholeheartedly....yet I cannot deny I was squirming in the beginning because it takes a bit of getting used to. First and foremost, forget critics. Your opinion is just as valid. This is another very important film with wonderful performances. While Damon's interpretation is a bit over the top, there is no doubt what perspective he was trying to convey. He is a very troubled black man who has issues. His boss, who "has a black wife and half-white children" is repugnant, and thinks that this gives him the right to say and think anything about African-Americans he likes which is pure [tomfoolery]. Jada Pinkett Smith is wonderful as the conscience after-the-fact and you wish to see her in more controlled, intelligent, roles as this. But the standout, to be sure, is Savion Glover whose dancing is so mesmerizing, it is quite easy to forget the rough ground we are covering and just revel in this man's talent. He also was the choreographer and the precision of his routines tended to help you stand the elaborate dance routines in a cotton field in blackface. Paul Mooney who plays Delacroix's father is positively wonderful and his comic routines are hilarious as well as insightful. He has always been a cutting edge comic but sadly has not received just due. But just as he did in "Four Little Girls" Spike MAKES YOU CONFRONT IT WHETHER YOU WANT TO OR NOT!!! I am quite satisfied with this DVD, am glad I purchased the movie because it is a must for any DVD collection. The only complaint I have is that some (as a matter of fact, all) of the deleted scenes should have been rethought because they tended to flesh out the plot a bit more. The ending may have been a bit too violent as a possible consequence to the network's insensitivity but overall, this is a very complicated, mulit-layered, film that will demand certainly more than one viewing. Besides, I have already made up my mind that everything Spike has/will do will be well worth the controversy he invariably provokes. Hats off again, Spike!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A funny--yet very moving--film
Review: Bamboozled was the type of movie that really makes you think. It touches on content of racial sterotyping in such a profound way that the viewer of the movie is almost left breathless. The movie is about an African-American tv executive named Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans). Delacroix is asked by his boss to come up with a concept for a hot new urban comedy. After Delacroix turns to his associate (Jada Pinkett-Smith) they come up with the idea of using two homeless street performers in the show (Savioin Glover and Tommy Davidson). The show is to be called "Mantan The New Millennium Minstrel Show"--and the preformers are to wear blackface, preform their show on a watermelon patch on a plantation, and revisit the comedy of the minstrel shows of the past. Delacroix hopes this stint of racist comedy will get him fired--his plan backfires horribly when people of all races start wearing blackface and referring to themselves in deragatory slang terms. This movie is potent, poignant, and powerful. It moves you to think about both things in the past and the future. Bamboozled can make you laugh at one part and then be moved to tears at another. I definately call Bamboozled a must see movie. Quite simply--the script is powerful, the acting is superb, the direction of the movie is fantastic, and the social message of the movie is definately worth hearing.
Rating:
Summary: Well done
Review: This film makes one think about many different things. It is not Spike Lee's best film, but it certainly worth a look. The movie was well done, with many fine comic moments as well as dramatic ones. It is a bit uneven, but that shouldn't keep you from watching a film that deals with racial issues in such a way.
Rating:
Summary: An Eye Opener
Review: Detractors have pointed to the exaggerated caricatures to show how unrealistic this whole plot is. But that is exactly the point that Mr. Lee wants to make. When strikingly similar complaints were directed toward a very different, but as important film about race - Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, the director, Stanley Kramer replied that the exaggeration was necessary to make an utterly convincing and unequivocal point. The Sidney Poiter character HAD to be made the ideal husband-to-be, however unrealistic it might have been for that era, in order to isolate race as the ONLY factor that needed to be confronted.Spike Lee does the same here. He isolates race as the issue here, in this case, the continual mistrelization of African Americans in the media. He adds two commercials to the tv show that really drive home the point: One satirizes Tommy Hilfiger, and the other, malt liquor ads. Both glorify hip hop culture and the ghetto life. After I saw this movie, thought about how plausible this scenario is, an offensive minstrel show that clearly degrades African Americans. It didn't take long to find examples in real life that come very close to the movie. Take a look at the highly successful, "Wassup?" ad campaign. Look at the programming for UPN. Mr. Lee also touches upon many other facets of the racial problem in America. The title character, poignantly portrayed by Damon Wayans - someone who was responsible for a fairly recent resurgance of demand for this type of entertainment- is a Harvard graduate, thus representing not only a long line of Black intellectuals from W.E.B. du Bois to today, but also represents the relative ineffectiveness of that approach to combat racism as opposed to grass roots efforts. Other aspects of this is touched upon like the opposing factions that have developed in the African American community, and most importantly, this film openly acknowledges that some of the blame must be placed on the very people who stands to be victimized by this problem. Mr. Lee absolves no one, including himself, and spreads the responsibility out to everyone, thus culminating in one of the most important works on contemporary race relations.
Rating: 
Summary: very unpowerful
Review: It was fun, but Spike Lee can't direct his way out of a paperbag. He ses his camera less than ever before. Spike Lee sits it down, as the actors act the scene out in different angles, and he edits it together. But it gets boring after awhile because it's just like sitting in a room listening to a conversation. Nothing fun about it. However Spike Lee had some good ideas and put them to use, a couple of scenes turned out to be really funny, but of course it was typical Spike Lee, a white man pretending to be black, was married to a black woman, a black guy who pretended to be French, and a group of gangster rappers who appeared throught out the film, but I'm still not quite sure of theirpurpose. ...I have respect for the film for 2 reasons, first of all I always respect independent films, but that's still no excuse, also it was shot on Digital Video which interests me because alot of film-makers still use film and its not often you see a film at the theater done in Digital Video, however Spike Lee seems to be new to the idea of digital video because his cinematography was [poor] and it was lit very poorly, very faded, not in an 8mm fasion but in a home video fasion. Lee also needs to learn where to stick certain scenes. I like the idea of the Black face make-up, but there's a scene right after the Black Face show gets started that Damon Wayans is in a radio booth talking about how controversey it is, however up to this point we've heard nothing of the controversey and it lost me for a minute. After this scene I saw people protesting outside of the studio. It would have made more sense to show the protesting THAN the radio interview.
Rating:
Summary: A Movie that makes you think.
Review: Being a Black Young woman, I thought this movie was made to let my young generation know how; we as a People are still being stereotyped. We still are used in the media to make people laugh. Spike Lee is letting us know that We have not rised above the stereotypes. Do you see Black people cast in serious tv roles? Spike Lee did a great job! I see Our World a lot differently now! If Martin Luther King were alive today, I feel he would be Saddened. We aren't all the same in the dark.
Rating:
Summary: Bamboozled about race?
Review: There are entertainments, there are movies, and then there are films. Spike Lee makes films--and BAMBOOZLED is just that. It isn't about ammo, special effects, and it isn't soft and furry, warm and cuddly. Its about race in the United States. That is what it is about (that IS explosive but it isn't ammo and explosions). BAMBOOZLED is about the views and responses that blacks have about race and about the views, or reflexes, that whites have about race. Wayans' boss, for instance "thinks" about race as variously: a great, continual, highly specialized trivia quiz; as sheeps clothing to put on over his wolfishness; as a money maker and a market niche; as activity/behavior/property--he's married to an African-American woman, is into rap, etc,etc,etc. Thats what he "thinks; but he KNOWS that inside this television network HQ where he is a bigwig shot-caller, black is what he says black is; that when it comes to putting a show on the air, black will be what he says black is; and that if he can hype something into a hit, the nation will think about black the way he leads it to think. The white writers and consultants he brings in are consumed only by the technical and legal aspects of producing, selling, and putting an acceptable, even "respectable", at a minimum defensible, spin on how the show can be presented. And by being able to give open vent to previously guarded, non-PC racism. All the blacks in the film demonstrate that race in the United States is a condition, a state of mind, and reality. Wayans is characterized as consumed with overcoming his condition (being black; being unappreciated artistically, underappreciated professionally), putting on white airs more than sheeps clothing. Glover and Davison "represent" blackness as an economic and social reality. The rappers highlight a political, mad as hell not going to take it anymore state of mind. Paul Mooney, as Wayans' father, Junebug, (in the hands down, far and away, no competition, no one comes close, absolute best role and performance of the film--in a ten minute stint) personifies a major, major issue of race in the United States in a nutshell. The audience inside the film demonstrates that a condition, a state of mind, a "reality" of blackness has long since become a matter of where you get your information: the medium is the message/the medium is the massage. Information runs the world and television, movies (not film!), music, video, radio, and publishing grease the wheels. That, is a SERIOUS condition. Spike, in his role as Greek chorus/film-maker puts these issues/angles/arguments/hot potatoes on the table for our clarification, edification, and I am convinced, for our education. He runs these hot potatoes up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes. Well, SIR, YES SIR!! By shoving, I mean serving, in this very specific and particularized way, these issues into our face he asks, "Where do these images and ideas come from? What use and purpose have they served? How have they lasted so long?" At root and at heart Spike's film asks, "How did these particular AMERICAN images and ideas about blackness come into being and how is it, why is it, that they are still with us? With us so powerfully, effectively, and subconsciously that we don't even notice that we aren't even noticing them. Unless and until Spike shows us them. Where DO these images and ideas of race come from? Who IS responsible for them? How do you ask--and answer-- those questions in a VISUAL medium? That is only part of the reason Spike Lee is A FILM-MAKER.
|
