- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
83Supple and engrossing, a liquid-smooth street-rap testimonial.
-
80Never less than riveting.
-
75Eighty-six minutes proves to be more than enough time to spend with these characters, but the Hughes Brothers make the case that this is a subculture as compelling as it is repellent.
-
75Genuinely entertaining and, thanks to a well of self-deluded quotes from the men, shockingly funny.
-
75A lively, compulsively watchable but ultimately sobering film about the men who make their living off prostitution.
-
75Entertaining, disturbing, sad, outrageous and often hilarious.
-
70Alternately mind-expanding and brain-numbing.
-
70What we are left with is a mildly entertaining "man on the street" gloss, seasoned with fragments from blaxploitation movies and music by Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye and others.
-
63Unfortunately, you really only hear about prostitution from the side of the pimp.
-
63Most of American Pimp feels like you've been slipped a Mickey.
-
63American Pimp, if not quite a self-serving orgy of self-justification, can hardly be thought of as a searching look at the skin trade.
-
60It's funny stuff, though most of the pimps seem like such buffoons it's hard to imagine how they actually make a living.
-
60One gets a pungent look at what makes being a pimp look attractive to some people in certain circumstances.
-
50Lushly entertaining, and its subjects are terrific storytellers with style to burn.
-
50Fascinating, partly because of its originality.
-
50The dehumanizing aspect of pimping is what's scariest about the Hughes brothers' investigation--so powerful the filmmakers realize they need only to record it.
-
40Credit the Hugheses for plunging headfirst into a deeply taboo topic, but they're doing it for the wrong reasons and thus playing into the worst of public stereotypes, namely that all black men are hustlers.
-
40Loutishness without self-awareness remains loutishness--and it is finally depressing.
-
30Appalling because it never transcends its adolescent-boy glee at being allowed entry to the highly sexualized arena of prostitution.