Titreenp
SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?
WillSushyMedia
This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
Lollivan
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Married Baby
Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
tbyrne4
Not exactly a "humanitarian masterpiece" as someone else said (yeah right!). More like cryptic super-exploitation. This is wildly, hilariously, rollickingly misguided pseudo-history at best. Outright race-baiting at worst. Made by the sleazoids who barfed up "Africa Addios" (giving Africans their own country back so soon just wasn't the right idea, was it!!), a film that featured the genuinely bizarre white South African girls on trampolines montage. A fervent call-to-arms for African-Americans made by white Europeans must inherently ring false, I am afraid. (we enslaved you. kill us!) Manages to be both numbing and completely, hideously insulting at the same time. The film is, under its very "SO racist it isn't being racist" exterior a sly work of racism. Presents blacks as nothing more than animals and savages, capable only of violence or submission to the will of whites. All the while remaining mute and mindless. No African-American in the film is presented as having a personality, substance, or intelligence. Every white all but glows. Every caucasian is a verbose, mercurial, immaculate sprite. That said, the film does (I would assume) approximate the way Africans were treated during the slave era more closely than other films. In that respect it deserves respect. The conditions are shown as filthy, disgusting, cruel. Every imaginable indignity is portrayed (and some you probably could not imagine). However, the film does have some power. The camera work is very inventive and the directors handle some of the chaotic scenes around the plantation very well. Some of the imagery is genuinely striking. There's a general feeling of chaos that comes through that's very effective. I'm not sure what the point is. But it's effective. Anyway, see the movie if you really want to be grossed out and insulted. File this one under SUPER exploitation. The directors may have had good intentions when they started out, but I think they just lost it when they got onto the set and decided to see how far out they could go. And no one, it seemed, was around to tell them to tone it down or put on the breaks. This is up there with Cannibal Holocaust and Men Behind the Sun. It's that sort of a deal. But don't kid yourselves, this AIN'T no humanitarian masterpiece.
Dan
Goodbye Uncle Tom is one of the sickest films that can be seen. It's about the trade slavery in America and Europe in the previous centuries. Watching Goodbye Uncle Tom, I viewed some of the nastiest and most unbelievable scenes that can be seen. Seeing the white men abuses, rapes, humiliates and does everything that comes to his twisted mind was unbelievably shocking, however , the film was boring too and had some moments that made me feel like turning it off, but i didn't, i watched it all the way. The most shocking thing about this film was that all of this has actually happened! It seemed even sicker than those holocaust stories and movies, In those holocaust stories and movies the Jewish people were slaughtered, but they weren't treated like animals that are kept in cages just for profit like the black man were. This film actually shows how the white empires are disgustingly cruel and careless. I can only recommend it to people who like being shocked or like watching shocking historical facts that have happened in the "developing" countries by the "developed" countries. 5/10
squeezebox
MONDO CANE and AFRICA ADDIO creators Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi take us on a journey through time, back to the mid 1800's, not too long before the civil war. The movie is styled like one of their previous documentaries, with actors talking to the camera as though being interviewed, and just about every form of human cruelty being enacted on the Africans who have been dragged overseas to become slaves.The movie is certainly disturbing, and it did indeed enrage me that ancestors of mine took part in this treatment of fellow human beings. But the movie lost me whenever it tried to create a parallel between the climate between blacks and whites in the 1800s and the 1960s.
Not that there weren't (and, unfortunately, still are) problems with racial tension in this country, but the movie seems to think that the average black person is still a savage at heart, just waiting for the right moment to break out an axe and slaughter the first white person he comes across. The movie climaxes with a radical black man reading The Diary of Nat Turner and imagining doing just that, including a horrific moment in which he smashes a baby's head against the wall.To me, the movie seems to have a negative opinion of just about everyone. Obviously, due to its decidedly anti-slavery stance, the slave traders are viewed as sick, inhuman monsters with only the faintest mask of civility on the surface. But the African characters are portrayed largely as ignorant buffoons, too dim-witted to understand what's happening to them.Later, during the modern day scenes, the sole black character is shown as having a major chip on his shoulder that has driven him nearly insane with rage, while the white people are a bunch of care-free bubble heads. Such generalizations and lack of depth or character development greatly lessens the power the movie may have had.But, as a purely gut-busting exercise in sleaze and disgusting imagery, GOODBYE UNCLE TOM sits confidently alongside other such gross-out movies as CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, SALO and MEN BEHIND THE SUN. Also, like those movies, GUT (hmmm, interesting abbreviation) goes so outrageously over-the-top in depicting its atrocities, most of the movie's true power is lost, and it becomes little more than a freak show.I hesitantly recommend the movie for fans of sick cinema as a curiosity. I warn pretty much everyone else to stay far, far away.
radiocuckoo
It has been about 3 years since i've seen this movie, and now that i know it's more widely available I cannot wait to get my hands on it again. The copy I originally viewed was in horrible shape. It was a bootleg of a version where the language was English, but the subtitles were in Greek!! So, this movie obviously strikes a chord with every viewer it reaches.American slavery movies always include a few heroes...the ones who aren't racist or fascist at all. This is not one of them. You can't help but feel utter contempt for all of colonial, pre-civil war America. After viewing it I couldn't stop talking about it for days. I would find it impossible for anyone to watch and not ask questions. I had read a few comments earlier how this was a European way of looking at American slavery. Perhaps that's why it's so unfriendly. The directors of this Italian flick are ruthless in sparing no American of a guilt-free conscience. One scene that particularly got me teary-eyed was when a white family is sitting down to dinner and they throw all of their leftover food to the "dogs" under the table...the "dogs" happen to be young, crying, black children.As ugly as the movie is, it truly is a piece of art, which could probably never be done again. Did you know that when it was released in America they gave it an "X" rating? You would think that in this century we could have more freedom to voice our opinion, but like i say, due to media outcry and politics, i highly doubt we will ever see a movie like this one again.