Black Snake Moan

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

A gorgeous, life-affirming movie. On paper, it sounds lurid bordering on ridiculous.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

As a filmmaker, Brewer doesn't just yank your chain: He forges a bond with his characters and his audience that produces ecstasy and healing.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Ricci's performance is brave and effective - the most provocative in a career that has rejected Hollywood norms.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The story is as humorous and raunchy as a good blues refrain, and the way Lazarus and Rae react to each other almost resembles the classic call-and-response structure of the blues.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Perpetually wide-eyed and mega-snarly bedraggled, Christina Ricci prowls through Black Snake Moan looking like something the cat dragged in. If you're anything like me, you'll be very grateful to the cat.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Black Snake Moan' is a trip to that unfamiliar territory well worth tagging along on.

TV Guide Ken Fox

It's beautifully shot -- the sweat-drenched jukejoint scenes are particularly evocative -- and features a terrific performance by Ricci, one that deserves to be seen by a wider audience than the one certain to be reeled in by those torrid ads.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Like "Hustle & Flow," Moan succeeds on languid atmosphere and the conviction of its leads. But it'd be nice if the execution matched the startling audacity of its premise.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Brewer, who romanticized the world of pimps and ho's in "Hustle & Flow," is obviously out to push some politically incorrect buttons with this ludicrous - yet, in the end, sweetly involving - Southern Gothic pulp yarn.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

I knew blues music can make you feel you're not alone when your woman has gone, and rock your soul when you're on top of the world. But until I saw Black Snake Moan, I didn't know it could also cure nymphomania.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

A wild and sweet little picture about sex, redemption and music, though perhaps not necessarily in that order.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

It's outlandish, hilariously overripe, and possibly sexist: You'd expect no less from Craig Brewer, the writer and director who made the passionate case for how hard it is out there for a pimp. But I loved the picture's tabloid energy and heart.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

It's easy to work up a good head of feminist steam over the misogyny and downright idiocy of a story that suggests that the tyranny of a righteous man can prevent an abused girl from making poor and whorish fashion choices. But it's hard to dismiss completely this atmospheric and persistently intriguing film.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A roiling, boiling mix of blaxploitation, sexploitation, Tennessee Williams and the Tennessee outback.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

This movie is crazy, but the insanity is electric.

Empire Damon Wise

Sam Jackson delivers the electric blues in a not-so-blue movie that promises more Deep South sin than it actually delivers.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's hard to know what to make of the thing, though it has a sleazy charm, it's never boring and it goes a certain distance on Samuel L. Jackson's conviction.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The best thing about Black Snake Moan, a song title, is the blues soundtrack. The movie is an absurdly jarring collection of archetypal characters in miserable circumstances with a resolution that feels forced and tacked on.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Mix Brigitte Bardot in "And God Created Woman" with Carroll Baker in "Baby Doll," sex it up times 10 and you have a notion of the effect of Christina Ricci in Black Snake Moan.

Village Voice Rob Nelson

Black Snake Moan sho-nuff ain't no "Sweetback." Indeed, long stretches of Brewer's Suthun-fried sophomore slump come down the country road lookin' as haggard as a workaholic ho on a Sunday morning.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is one of those ludicrous, semi-offensive, semi-entertaining potboilers that feels as if the script were dragged out from someone's naughty-book stash.

Slate Dana Stevens

Black Snake Moan morphs into a wacky intergenerational bonding movie, something closer to "Harold and Maude" or "The Karate Kid" with a dusting of Southern grit.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Brewer knows how to guide his leads through this improbable story, and he kept me interested in spite of everything.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

In spite of Amelia Vincent's toothsome cinematography and the down-home locations, the movie often has the lumbering, literal-minded rhythms of a second-rate stage play -- not a moan or a howl, but a slow, anxious groan.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Be prepared to collapse into a hoot and a howl of hilarity at all the wrong moments.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The blues music in "Moan" is superfine, but my oh my, what to make of the ripe Southern cliches and this absurd story. The film is so jaw-dropping awful that it just might become a boxoffice hit.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

Though Black Snake Moan is unadulterated deep-fried silliness from "Hustle & Flow" filmmaker Craig Brewer, Jackson makes it indisputably more palatable. It's still not a very good movie, but it's intermittently entertaining (and sometimes unintentionally funny).

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Parading through most of the movie in a cutoff T-shirt and bikini briefs, Ricci takes the stereotype of the oversexed farmer's daughter to gothic extremes; Jackson's character, named Lazarus, is similarly drawn with oversize strokes.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Black Snake Moan strikes me as hogwash. It fundamentally does not work; its consciously far-fetched, out-there notions of the things damaged people do in the name of love are reductive and go only so far. It's as if the premise were tethered to a radiator or something.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Offensive on multiple levels -- if only the plot had any levels at all -- Black Snake Moan leaves no "Tobacco Road" cliche unsmoked. Ricci gives it her all, and then some, but even her body and Jackson's blues can't heal a movie that rockets plum off its nut.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Black Snake Moan is, at its core, a fairly straightforward variation on George Bernard Shaw -- "Pigsfeetmalion," if you will. One day, when he outgrows his terminal adolescence, Brewer might be the perfect filmmaker to tackle Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

For all the preposterous clichés of the plot, which clanks as loudly as Laz's chain, and for all the inertness of Justin Timberlake's performance as Rae's brooding squeeze, Black Snake Moan finds unchained energy in its foolishness, and gives Mr. Jackson a chance to pluck a guitar and sing. He's really good at it, too. The music almost redeems the movie.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Maybe Jackson should avoid any more movies with "snake" in the title.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

At heart, "BSM" is no different from the midnight movies of the '60s and '70s that reveled in a head-spinning blend of blatant exploitation, provocative racial commentary and overwrought performances.