Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
39 Adventures of Power
66 Afterschool
73 Amreeka
49 Antichrist
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
71 Big Fan
65 Black Dynamite
76 Bliss
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
76 Broken Embraces
70 Bronson
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
60 Collapse
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
53 Dare
50 Defamation
67 Departures
70 Earth Days
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
88 Fantastic Mr. Fox
31 Fix
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
xx From Mexico with Love
28 Gentlemen Broncos
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Horse Boy, The
74 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
26 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
43 Little Traitor, The
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
46 Love Hurts
84 Maid, The
45 Mammoth
75 Messenger, The
55 Missing Person, The
59 More Than a Game
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
48 New York, I Love You
66 No Impact Man
26 Oh My God
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
79 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73 Red Cliff
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
65 Skin
41 Splinterheads
42 Staten Island
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
58 Storm
82 Sun, The
49 Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73 That Evening Sun
61 Trucker
49 Turning Green
83 U2 3D
45 Uncertainty
67 Visual Acoustics
32 War on Kids
67 Way We Get By, The
65 Wedding Song, The
xx White on Rice
59 William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74 Woman in Berlin, A
43 Women in Trouble
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Baby Boy

EMAILPRINTColumbia Pictures

Baby Boy reviews
55
8.8 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 12 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama

Written by: John Singleton

Directed by: John Singleton

Release Date:
Theatrical: June 27, 2001
DVD: November 6, 2001

Running Time: 100 minutes, Color / BW

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: R for strong sexuality, language, violence, and some drug use

Starring Tyrese Gibson, AJ Johnson, Ving Rhames, Snoop Dogg, Taraji Henson, Omar Gooding, and Tamara LaSeon Basszz

Ten years after "Boyz N the Hood," writer and director John Singleton returns to the same inner-city L.A. neighborhood and its complex social and political issues for the story of Jody (Gibson), a misguided, 20-year-old African-American who is really just a "baby boy" finally forced-kicking and screaming -- to face the commitments of real life.

What The Critics Said

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...

88

USA Today Mike Clark

An easy movie to pick apart, but it lives, breathes and switches moods from humor to despair better than any American release this year.

Read Full Review >
88

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Now Singleton, too, dares to take a hard look at his community. His characters are a little older, and he is older, too, and less forgiving.

Read Full Review >
80

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Lacks the cumulative impact of "Boyz," since Singleton allows repetition and sermonizing to dull his theme about the infantilization of black males. But Baby Boy leaves you shaken.

Read Full Review >
80

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Jody's story is told with so much heart -- and his character is acted with such a winning combination of playfulness, vulnerability and sexual dynamism by Mr. Gibson -- that you can forgive the occasionally incoherent storytelling, the overwrought moments and the haphazard, unconvincing excursions into dream and fantasy.

Read Full Review >
75

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Sometimes gets repetitive and is slightly overlong. But it's got solid performances.

Read Full Review >
75

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

What holds the movie together, however, is Gibson's broodingly responsive performance.

Read Full Review >
75

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Kicks off the Oedipus theme that gallops through the story.

Read Full Review >
75

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A movie that will act like a smack in the face to some audiences, while others may simply laugh in recognition.

Read Full Review >
75

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Raunchy, provocative and often very funny.

Read Full Review >
60

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

At once too neat and too messy, but films like this are too rare to leave it at that. Ragged but ambitious, it retains a core of genuine emotion -- this picture is doing the best it can, and although that may not be everything, it ought to count for something.

Read Full Review >
60

TV Guide Ken Fox

Superbly acted by everyone involved (Rhames does his best work since "Pulp Fiction"), the film is really more about character than plot, though frankly, at more than two hours, it could have used a bit more of the latter.

Read Full Review >
60

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The characters are so full-bodied and the feelings so raw and complex that I'd call this the best thing he's (Singleton) done to date.

Read Full Review >
60

Slate David Edelstein

Rambling and conflicted as it is, it's one of the most entertaining African-American comedies of manners ever made.

Read Full Review >
60

New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf

It's a feel-good movie that happens to have a lot of feel-bad in it. The gratuitous violence sucks, and the pat conclusion prompts one to shout don't believe the hope!.

Read Full Review >
58

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Singleton just may be challenging us to laugh at the film or with it and then feel extremely uneasy for doing so. If so, that's admirable; if not, he's made a very strange soap opera.

Read Full Review >
58

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's more ambitious and passionate than thoughtful. Singleton is better at criticizing than understanding, and he leaves too many characters lacking a legitimate voice.

Read Full Review >
50

Variety Todd McCarthy

Can be taken to task for its overt point-making, lackluster style and some late-on dramatic contrivances seemingly dragged in to provide a little violence.

Read Full Review >
50

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

You may or may not like what you see, but there it is, indisputably, right in your face.

Read Full Review >
50

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

It would have been enough that Singleton raise these difficult questions without trying to wrap them up, too, in the last five minutes.

Read Full Review >
50

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Despite the audience pandering -- not just in its violence, but in its wall-to-wall sexual vulgarity -- there are terrific elements in Baby Boy.

Read Full Review >
40

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The movie makes an over-long deal about Jody's immaturity and never seems to get beyond it.

Read Full Review >
40

Village Voice Amy Taubin

Pretty much a mess, but it also has a couple of long stretches that are extremely daring in that they reveal black family dynamics we've never seen on screen before.

Read Full Review >
40

Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams

Singleton's words are no fitting match for his visuals, and his metaphors are so heavy-handed -- they undermine the smart subtlety of the direction.

Read Full Review >
38

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A mistaken message is a price a filmmaker pays when he tries to load weighty themes like the cycle of violence on an overgrown boy who scoots around on a bicycle.

Read Full Review >
30

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

Singleton has neither the emotional nor intellectual depth to do justice to his thesis. He is too in awe of the stereotypical hood lifestyles and macho posturings that he's trying to critique.

Read Full Review >
20

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

A preachy, monotonous failure hyped as a follow-up to his incendiary 1991 debut, "Boyz N the Hood."

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jathiya N. gave it a 10:
This movie is very good. It has a realistic plot. Snoop and tyrese didint make the movie hard to watch.

Jeremy gave it a 5:
Well-made, but a failure for a simple reason: The main character is nothing more than an imature baby, so therefore, we don't care about him.

Jathiya M. gave it a 10:
Great movie very real.

Charmaine W. gave it a 10:
Great movie.

Esteban B. gave it an 8:
A good movie once you understand what its about, but in all a good movie.

Tarik T. gave it a 10:
Great acting. Great movie.

Paul P. gave it a 10:
Living in South Central Los Angeles, this movie hits close to home.

Read more user comments >

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use