Baadasssss!

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

What's fascinating is the way Mario, working from his father's autobiography and his own memories, has somehow used his first-hand experience without being cornered by it.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Baadasssss is about feeling pain and frustration, about having a sense of purpose that overwhelms everything else, about great cost and great risk, the pain of isolation and the intoxicating effect of fighting against the odds.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The beauty of Baadasssss! is the way Mario Van Peebles salutes his father's truth by coaxing it into legend.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Among the many things that Baadasssss! is, it is also a movie about moviemaking. In fact, the film should be a primer for anyone about to make an independent film.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The technical side of Baadasssss! far surpasses that of "Sweetback," and re-created scenes from the 1971 film look much better in the son's hands than they did in the father's.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Overall, Baadasssss! succeeds marvelously at evoking the passion and frantic energy behind "Sweetback" and putting it all in the context of its politically charged era.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

The mood never droops, however, saved by Mario’s well-studied ability to channel his father, a performance as delicately nuanced and polished as the film is frenetic and raw.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A much better movie than the one it honors.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Compelling both as a chronicle of guerrilla filmmaking and as a son's movie about his father, it presents a clear-eyed, warts-and-all view of artistic obsession.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Does a terrific job of capturing the outlaw energy of the original production.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Accurate enough as history to provide a potent reminder that black independent cinema did not end with Oscar Micheaux or begin with Spike Lee.

The New Yorker David Denby

Mario Van Peebles creates what can only be called a lucid fantasia; the movie quickly reaches a pitch of manic activity and stays there. It’s an exhausting, and exhaustingly pleasurable, entertainment. [31 May 2004, p. 88]

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

A vibrant, funny, fully realized slice of oft-overlooked cultural, show-business, and black history. It's better than the film whose genesis it chronicles, though inherently doomed to be nowhere near as important.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film is technically raw, but the sight of Van Peebles playing his father at a defining moment in movie history exerts a potent fascination.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Baadasssss! is the portrait of a visionary with a blind spot, a man starved for kindness who can no longer recognize the responsibility to be kind, even to his kids. But it's a portrait of a visionary nonetheless.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This colorful time capsule of a movie was directed by Van Peebles's son, who appeared in "Sweetback" as a child and doesn't minimize the difficulties his father's underfinanced dream entailed for his hard-pressed family and friends.

USA Today Mike Clark

This movie is more wistful and winking, though it's obvious Mario is still working out emotional baggage with his tyrannically driven old man.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

Mario Van Peebles, bearing an uncanny resemblance to his father, illuminates the soul of a man driven by a belief in himself and a love for his community.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Both an homage to his dad and a backstage story rich in Hollywood lore.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Both public tribute and private therapy session, Baadasssss! should have been a self-conscious disaster. By confronting his past with wit and style, Van Peebles has instead created a meta-cool history lesson and homage.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The most exhilarating film about indie moviemaking on a shoestring since "Ed Wood," even if its subject -- the director's dad, ultra-macho filmmaking pioneer Melvin Van Peebles -- couldn't be more different than the notoriously inept Wood.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Sobering and wildly entertaining.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Its mix of personal reminiscence (Mario made his screen debut playing Sweetback as a boy) and cultural history is fascinating. This engages in a fair amount of mythmaking itself, but its lesson in self-empowerment is both vivid and sincere.

The New York Times Dave Kehr

Mario Van Peebles, of course, inhabits a very different world from that of his father: a world that his father, in some small way, helped to create. It is his awareness of this paradox, of the progressive import of his father's film and of the repressive import of his father's personality, that informs this modest but interesting work.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

In its spirit and execution, Baadasssss! lives up to its forebear.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

As frantic and frenzied as its source material.

The Hollywood Reporter Marilyn Moss

One of the best looks at a period in American film to be seen in a long, long while. BaadAsssss Cinema has meat on its bones and analysis in its soul.

LA Weekly Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

The genuinely fascinating story is one of revolutionary intention and unrelenting grit, but while Mario is a competent enough filmmaker, he has neither the urgency nor, frankly, the chops to make his own movie fire up.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Baadasssss! is best taken as an examination of filmmaking itself.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The movie is at its best when it's most straightforward. Flights of fancy like the child angel perched on Melvin's ceiling or his conversations with the black-clad Sweetback, who appears to undermine his confidence at crucial junctures, seem forced and pointless.

Film Threat Staff (Not credited)

A heartfelt and incredibly resonant ode to his father's achievement, Mario's film relives the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the making of Melvin's pioneering effort.

Empire Patrick Peters

This plays very much like a standard biopic, lacking the dangerous spirit of the movie that inspired it.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

While the younger Van Peebles certainly looks the part, Baadasssss! never feels like anything more than kids playing dress-up.