| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
Supple and engrossing, a liquid-smooth street-rap testimonial.
|
| 80 |
Mr. Showbiz
Never less than riveting.
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
Entertaining, disturbing, sad, outrageous and often hilarious.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Eighty-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.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Genuinely entertaining and, thanks to a well of self-deluded quotes from the men, shockingly funny.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
A lively, compulsively watchable but ultimately sobering film about the men who make their living off prostitution.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
What 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.
|
| 70 |
Village Voice
Alternately mind-expanding and brain-numbing.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Unfortunately, you really only hear about prostitution from the side of the pimp.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Examiner
Most of American Pimp feels like you've been slipped a Mickey.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
American Pimp, if not quite a self-serving orgy of self-justification, can hardly be thought of as a searching look at the skin trade.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
One gets a pungent look at what makes being a pimp look attractive to some people in certain circumstances.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
It's funny stuff, though most of the pimps seem like such buffoons it's hard to imagine how they actually make a living.
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
Fascinating, partly because of its originality.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Lushly entertaining, and its subjects are terrific storytellers with style to burn.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
The dehumanizing aspect of pimping is what's scariest about the Hughes brothers' investigation--so powerful the filmmakers realize they need only to record it.
|
| 40 |
Time
Loutishness without self-awareness remains loutishness--and it is finally depressing.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
Erin Aubry
Credit 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.
|
| 30 |
Film.com
Appalling because it never transcends its adolescent-boy glee at being allowed entry to the highly sexualized arena of prostitution.
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