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Film review

Too heavy-handed for a Deep South romp

Black Snake Moan is too busy piling on the stereotypes to see the humor.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published March 1, 2007

Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan might be considered a comedy, if its delivery weren't so seriously flawed. Whatever laughter occurs is a defense mechanism against its ridiculously lurid premise and ham bone pretentiousness. One wonders if this truly is the same Brewer who brilliantly created Hustle & Flow.

Like that film, Black Snake Moan is set in the Deep South, but this time Brewer works with the stereotypical perspective of someone who never ventured below Canada. Here, it is a region of leering rednecks, religious zealots and whores traipsing around in cutoffs that would make Daisy Duke blush. The movie would fit nicely on the bottom half of a 1960s drive-in double feature after some similar Southern insult like God's Little Acre.

The retro poster art suggests as much, with Samuel L. Jackson gripping a heavy chain wrapped around Christina Ricci's frighteningly thin waist. The racial implication of that misleading image -a black stud trapping and objectifying a white trash woman - is an issue Brewer teases yet mostly avoids. He has plenty of other spoiling fish to fry.

Jackson plays former blues musician Lazarus Woods, pitied by townsfolk after his wife takes off with his dignity and another man. Ricci is cast as Rae, a drunken bimbo with a peculiar form of nymphomania that causes her to writhe whenever the urge takes hold, which is often. No matter how silly Rae's condition seems, Ricci and Brewer are determined to take it seriously.

Rae's and Lazarus' stories intersect when Rae is beaten by the only guy she ever resisted. Lazarus finds her unconscious on a back road, clad in panties and peek-a-boo T-shirt. This is a religious experience for Lazarus, who considers it his Christian duty to chain the nearly naked Rae to a radiator. She awakes terrified and seeks escape by offering sex because that's how she usually gets what she wants. Lazarus flatly refuses, the sole restraint shown by Brewer's script.

Of course they rebuild self-esteem through each other, like Miss Daisy and her driver, only with f-bombs and repressed eroticism. Redemption comes when Lazarus picks up the guitar again and Rae dances to the juke joint beat without tearing off her clothes.

That might be just trashy enough to be fun, except Brewer can't resist piling on subplots about Rae's negligent mother, her boyfriend Justin Timberlake, who is away for National Guard duty, and Lazarus' shy affection for a pharmacist (S. Epatha Merkerson).

The scandal imagined when Lazarus and Rae are seen together causes everyone grief that stretches the movie at least 30 minutes longer than necessary.

Brewer has all the ingredients of a pulpish romp and never realizes the joke he's making. Prurient interest is all Black Snake Moan has going for it, and Ricci is pleased to serve in a performance that will be misinterpreted as brave in some corners. Jackson is solid, although a gentler presence such as Morgan Freeman would work better for the material.

Grade: D

Director: Craig Brewer

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, S. Epatha Merkerson, John Cothran Jr.

Screenplay: Craig Brewer

Rating: R; strong sexuality and profanity, nudity, drug content, violence, mature themes

Running time: 116 min.

[Last modified February 28, 2007, 09:50:58]