Black and White

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A pulsating snapshot of America caught in a mad, liberating identity crisis.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The agony of invention is there on the screen.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The story is a mess, as usual with Toback's movies, but intricacies of contemporary urban culture are vividly illuminated by his insistence on blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Toback presents specific characters dealing with specific problems and, through their stories, somehow manages to take the temperature of the times.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Immediately disarming for its candor, verve, and sheer nerve.

Slate David Edelstein

Gleefully pushes everyone's buttons...and that manages to exploit our own racial discomfort and envy in ways that leave us hungry for more.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Fascinating, perplexing, amusing, and irascible.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

It's another of Mr. Toback's quick-talking autobiographies that, like the best pop, have a clock running on their expiration dates.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This lively mess proves that when Toback loses his head, he does it with style.

Newsweek Jack Kroll

Maverick moviemaker James Toback has latched on to the most fascinating cultural phenomenon of the American moment.

Film.com Robert Horton

Works best as a free-flowing essay.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

A sui generis excursion into sex and race that is by turns terrible...and close to divine.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

An audacious but underconceived blend of fiction and documentary that questions the idea of race and identity in America.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

At heart a cliché-strewn melodrama about a bunch of white, upper-class Manhattan kids who aspire to ghetto culture.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

There's something deeper at play in the film, something psychologically foul, voyeuristic and personal.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Too often monochromatic, programmatic and just plain lost.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Strident and bombastic.

Film.com John Hartl

The movie is such a mess that it seems to have been assembled from pieces randomly picked from the cutting-room floor.

Film.com Sean Means

When your characters are only skin deep, so is your message.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Toback's method of presenting the evidence without judgment backfires, finally appearing just as shapeless as the movie's structure.

USA Today Mike Clark

Sometimes laughably incoherent.

Los Angeles Times John Anderson

The voyeuristic indulgences of a middle-aged filmmaker playing out his most deep-seated and unresolved sexual fantasies and anxieties.

Chicago Tribune Barbara Shulgasser

There is really no one to like in this film.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Ideological disaster!

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Peaks with its opening scene.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

An extravagant mess.

TNT RoughCut Pauline Adamek

When worlds collide - people yawn.