| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 25, 2005

It's an exhausting, and exhaustingly pleasurable, entertainment.

Full Review | Aug 1, 2004

Seethes with well-targeted humor that mixes comfortably with its simmering energy and anger.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 3, 2004

Effectively raw and stylish.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 25, 2004

Not just forgiving toward the elder Van Peebles, it's filled with a spirit of comic amazement about what he accomplished.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 25, 2004

A reminder that good intentions don't always make for good movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 24, 2004

A great glimpse inside an artist's struggle. That is, an artist's funky, nasty struggle.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 18, 2004

What it lacks in focus, it makes up for in energy and commitment.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jun 17, 2004

Mario's done a good job of depicting Melvin's accomplishments. Yet it seems to me that he's still selling his father's legacy short.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 11, 2004

Never feels like anything more than kids playing dress-up.

| Jun 11, 2004

A lively, absorbing, often uncannily authentic docudrama.

| Jun 11, 2004

Mario lacks the finesse as a filmmaker to deliver the nuanced portrait his father deserves, but he largely succeeds: We see Melvin as a flawed man, but one who worked for something larger than himself.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 11, 2004

Full of itself, as fiercely independent as it should be and primed with real passion, Baadasssss! is a salute to an imperfect man, a history of an imperfect time and a celebration of an imperfect film that kicked doors open.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jun 11, 2004

More nuanced and displays far more filmmaking finesse than Mario's previous films as a director.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 11, 2004

A color-saturated celebration of cinematic pleasure and filial love.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 11, 2004

One of the best movies I've seen about the making of a movie.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 11, 2004

It's hard to imagine that the chronicle of an artistic ordeal could be this much fun to watch.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 10, 2004

A sobering and wildly entertaining account of how the elder Van Peebles crashed through the hurdles that continue to hinder independent filmmakers.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 10, 2004

It works as a biopic, as a truly American story, and as a sentimental, but never cloying, gift from son to father -- and from father to son.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 10, 2004

You don't need to have seen the father's movie to enjoy the son's, a multitiered fantasia that's part cinema history, part family reunion, and all hall of mirrors.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 4, 2004