 "Outrageous" is the description that pops up in several reviews of Black Snake Moan, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Ricci. It's a term that has both negative and positive connotations. "The movie strolls right past absurdity into offensiveness," writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. Similarly, Claudia Puig comments in USA Today: "Though this film tries to convey a sense of campy fun, it ends up feeling off-putting and disturbing." But A.O. Scott in the New York Times remarks, "Underneath the surface of racial and sexual button pushing, behind the brandished guns and bared breasts, is a heart of pure, buttery cornpone." Joe Morgenstern concludes in the Wall Street Journal: "For all the preposterous clichés of the plot, Black Snake Moan finds unchained energy in its foolishness." Bob Strauss writes in the Los Angeles Daily News: "What goes on in this certifiably nuts movie is so extreme and original that you can't help gazing at it in awe. When you're not inclined to divert your eyes, anyway." And in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert commented on the audience's response to the film: "I had never really heard many half-snorts before. Snorts, yes, and silence. But what do you make of an audience that has no idea how to react?" |
