Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
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
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.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: 2 Fast 2 Furious Boyz N the Hood Four Brothers Higher Learning Rosewood Shaft
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
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...
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 >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 >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 >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 >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Sometimes gets repetitive and is slightly overlong. But it's got solid performances.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
What holds the movie together, however, is Gibson's broodingly responsive performance.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Kicks off the Oedipus theme that gallops through the story.
Read Full Review >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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.
