Review: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

Reviews

Amazing Grace

Polite under fire

By JUSTINE ELIAS | February 21, 2007

2.5 Stars

phxcinema#Amazing_Grace#')

Michael Apted’s stirring if conventional bio-pic of 18th-century British abolitionist William Wilberforce offers rum, funneled into anti-slavery PM William Pitt the Younger (Benedict Cumberbatch), and sugar, in the form of the hero’s adoring wife, Barbara (Romola Garai). This is polite England, so Middle Passage horrors remain veiled: slave turned memoirist Oloudaqh Equiano a/k/a “Gustavus” (Youssou N’Dour) is silenced until the end credits. As Wilberforce, Ioan Griffudd (The Fantastic Four) conveys the charisma of a righteous hero. Just how he outmaneuvers his enemies becomes a cynical surprise, especially in a bio-pic financed by fundamentalist tycoon Philip Anschutz of Walden Media. Don’t go seeking answers here as to where God is when humanity countenances atrocity; that’s for another film to deal with. Better ones, like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. For now, there’s Wilberforce exacting moral justice without going berserk.

Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Movies, Biopics, More

| More

See more deals

view all

[ 02/18 ] 20th Annual Cajun & Zydeco Mardi Gras Ball @ Rhodes-On-the-Pawtuxet

[ 02/18 ] "Dana Levin: A Classical Realist In the 21st Century," an exhibit of paintings @ Bert Gallery

[ 02/18 ] A screening of Andy Warhol's Sleep @ RK Projects + Magic Lantern Cinema

ARTICLES BY JUSTINE ELIAS

JONATHAN HAYES KNOWS WHEREOF HE WHIFFS | April 19, 2011
Forensic scientists, bit players in crime fiction since the era of Sherlock Holmes, became bestseller material in the 1990s with Patricia Cornwell's cut-and-slice procedurals featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta.

PLAIN TALK | September 15, 2009
Jesse Sheidlower, an editor-at-large of the Oxford English Dictionary , an expert in slang, and the author of The F-Word , can't stop talking about fuck.

HARD TIMES | March 24, 2009
When last year the BBC interrupted its broadcast of Little Dorrit — which hinges on the downfall of a Bernie Madoff–like figure — for a tawdry true-crime documentary, thousands of viewers complained: don't leave us hanging!

BELLE DE NUIT | June 16, 2008
Belle is, as she introduces herself right up front, “a whore.” Or, if you please, “prostitute, call girl, escort, hooker, courtesan.”

OSS 17: LE CAIRE NID D'ESPIONS/OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES | May 14, 2008
Imagine a blithe, covertly bisexual James Bond swanning around pre-Suez Cairo in a send-up directed by the early Zucker brothers.