Storyline
Director Mario Van Peebles chronicles the complicated production of his father Melvin's classic 1971 film, "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." Playing his father in the film, Van Peebles offers an unapologetic account of Melvin's brash and sometimes deceptive conduct on the set of the film, including questionable antics like writing bad checks, tricking a local fire department and allowing his son, Mario, to shoot racy sex scenes at the age of 11.
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Reviews
91
Entertainment Weekly
The beauty of Baadasssss! is the way Mario Van Peebles salutes his father's truth by coaxing it into legend.
80
The New Yorker
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]
80
The A.V. Club
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.
80
Village Voice
Accurate enough as history to provide a potent reminder that black independent cinema did not end with Oscar Micheaux or begin with Spike Lee.
75
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.
