Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
75
(33 sources)
75
(33 sources)
-
100
Chicago Sun-Times
What's fascinating is the way Mario, working from his father's autobiography and his own memories, has somehow used his first-hand experience without being cornered by it. Read Full Review » -
100
Baltimore Sun
Baadasssss is about feeling pain and frustration, about having a sense of purpose that overwhelms everything else, about great cost and great risk, the pain of isolation and the intoxicating effect of fighting against the odds. Read Full Review » -
91
Entertainment Weekly
The beauty of Baadasssss! is the way Mario Van Peebles salutes his father's truth by coaxing it into legend. Read Full Review » -
89
Austin Chronicle
Among the many things that Baadasssss! is, it is also a movie about moviemaking. In fact, the film should be a primer for anyone about to make an independent film. Read Full Review » -
88
Charlotte Observer
The technical side of Baadasssss! far surpasses that of "Sweetback," and re-created scenes from the 1971 film look much better in the son's hands than they did in the father's. Read Full Review » -
88
Chicago Tribune
Overall, Baadasssss! succeeds marvelously at evoking the passion and frantic energy behind "Sweetback" and putting it all in the context of its politically charged era. Read Full Review » -
88
Premiere
The mood never droops, however, saved by Mario's well-studied ability to channel his father, a performance as delicately nuanced and polished as the film is frenetic and raw. Read Full Review » -
88
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83
Portland Oregonian
Compelling both as a chronicle of guerrilla filmmaking and as a son's movie about his father, it presents a clear-eyed, warts-and-all view of artistic obsession. Read Full Review » -
80
Washington Post
Does a terrific job of capturing the outlaw energy of the original production. Read Full Review » -
80
Village Voice
Accurate enough as history to provide a potent reminder that black independent cinema did not end with Oscar Micheaux or begin with Spike Lee. Read Full Review » -
80
The New Yorker
Mario Van Peebles creates what can only be called a lucid fantasia; the movie quickly reaches a pitch of manic activity and stays there. It's an exhausting, and exhaustingly pleasurable, entertainment. [31 May 2004, p. 88] Read Full Review » -
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
A vibrant, funny, fully realized slice of oft-overlooked cultural, show-business, and black history. It's better than the film whose genesis it chronicles, though inherently doomed to be nowhere near as important. Read Full Review » -
75
Rolling Stone
The film is technically raw, but the sight of Van Peebles playing his father at a defining moment in movie history exerts a potent fascination. Read Full Review » -
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Baadasssss! is the portrait of a visionary with a blind spot, a man starved for kindness who can no longer recognize the responsibility to be kind, even to his kids. But it's a portrait of a visionary nonetheless. Read Full Review » -
75
Christian Science Monitor
This colorful time capsule of a movie was directed by Van Peebles's son, who appeared in "Sweetback" as a child and doesn't minimize the difficulties his father's underfinanced dream entailed for his hard-pressed family and friends. Read Full Review » -
75
USA Today
This movie is more wistful and winking, though it's obvious Mario is still working out emotional baggage with his tyrannically driven old man. Read Full Review » -
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Mario Van Peebles, bearing an uncanny resemblance to his father, illuminates the soul of a man driven by a belief in himself and a love for his community. Read Full Review » -
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Both an homage to his dad and a backstage story rich in Hollywood lore. Read Full Review » -
75
New York Daily News
Both public tribute and private therapy session, Baadasssss! should have been a self-conscious disaster. By confronting his past with wit and style, Van Peebles has instead created a meta-cool history lesson and homage. Read Full Review » -
75
New York Post
The most exhilarating film about indie moviemaking on a shoestring since "Ed Wood," even if its subject -- the director's dad, ultra-macho filmmaking pioneer Melvin Van Peebles -- couldn't be more different than the notoriously inept Wood. Read Full Review » -
75
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70
Chicago Reader
Its mix of personal reminiscence (Mario made his screen debut playing Sweetback as a boy) and cultural history is fascinating. This engages in a fair amount of mythmaking itself, but its lesson in self-empowerment is both vivid and sincere. Read Full Review » -
70
The New York Times
Mario Van Peebles, of course, inhabits a very different world from that of his father: a world that his father, in some small way, helped to create. It is his awareness of this paradox, of the progressive import of his father's film and of the repressive import of his father's personality, that informs this modest but interesting work. Read Full Review » -
70
Los Angeles Times
In its spirit and execution, Baadasssss! lives up to its forebear. Read Full Review » -
70
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70
The Hollywood Reporter
One of the best looks at a period in American film to be seen in a long, long while. BaadAsssss Cinema has meat on its bones and analysis in its soul. Read Full Review » -
70
LA Weekly
The genuinely fascinating story is one of revolutionary intention and unrelenting grit, but while Mario is a competent enough filmmaker, he has neither the urgency nor, frankly, the chops to make his own movie fire up. Read Full Review » -
63
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60
TV Guide
The movie is at its best when it's most straightforward. Flights of fancy like the child angel perched on Melvin's ceiling or his conversations with the black-clad Sweetback, who appears to undermine his confidence at crucial junctures, seem forced and pointless. Read Full Review » -
60
Film Threat
A heartfelt and incredibly resonant ode to his father's achievement, Mario's film relives the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the making of Melvin's pioneering effort. Read Full Review » -
40
Empire
This plays very much like a standard biopic, lacking the dangerous spirit of the movie that inspired it. Read Full Review » -
30
Washington Post
While the younger Van Peebles certainly looks the part, Baadasssss! never feels like anything more than kids playing dress-up. Read Full Review »
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