Baby Boy: Critic Reviews

What holds the movie together ... is Gibson's broodingly responsive performance.

For the first time since Hood, Singleton is really sailing.

John Singleton must believe the truth will set him free, for he tells it, uncompromisingly, in Baby Boy. You may or may not like what you see, but there it is, indisputably, right in your face.

[Singleton] He means for this to be r,38p,11p revelatory, but it is instead exhausting.

Baby Boy is a movie that will act like a smack in the face to some audiences, while others may simply laugh in recognition.

The characters are so full-bodied and the feelings so raw and complex that I'd call this the best thing John Singleton has done to date

Affecting if sometimes overwrought.

I felt myself drawn into a vortex of raw emotion from which I could not escape.

If only Singleton had filtered Baby Boy's passion through the ideas of real deep thinkers on this subject, he might yet fulfill the great promise that he showed us back when he was a 23 year-old baby boy wonder himself.

Pootie Tang this ain't.

[Jody's] lessons on growing up and moving on never ring more than halfhearted and false.

One of the most entertaining African-American comedies of manners ever made.

Highly flawed but hugely fascinating.

Unfolding as a journey filled with violence, romance, and pain, this is yet another coming-of-age tale except that the hero is not a teenager but a young man who goes out of his way to be macho but really is a mama boy.

Recommended mainly to the more devoted Singleton fans, Baby Boy is pretty strong evidence of a filmmaker who still has plenty to say.

An unfortunate hybrid of Oedipal and Peter Pan complexes, Singleton's film is a mishmash of half-cocked ideas and unrealized sentiments.

...while it's not as gritty as Boyz N the Hood or as compelling as Higher Learning, Baby Boy is certainly worth checking out if only for the superb performances...

There's no cuddling this Baby Boy, a profoundly sad commentary on the vicious circle that continues to terminally plague our bewildered, impressionable and disadvantaged young urban black men.

Johnson and Rhames are superb as Jody's charming, hard-working mother and her ex-con boyfriend Melvin.

It's an intermittently powerful but deeply flawed film.

To a large degree, its ungainliness is forgivable, as it reflects a breadth of ambition, not a failure of talent.

The director deserves credit for tackling a worthwhile subject, but many will find the film's tone too soft and approving.

Never rises above the level of a soap opera.

With a combination of sensitivity and insight, John Singleton presents a fascinating portrait of an African American that goes against stereotypes of 20-year-old men.

'Baby Boy' is a powerhouse of a film, and so sexy it's like celluloid Viagra.