Disappionted: Should Have Been Better

Rating: 5/10 (24 February 2019)

This is a great idea for a movie. It just needed better treatment. I don't mind, as others do here, that the movie strayed from the facts. And there were some excellent parts, such as the juxtaposition of the Klansmen watching "Birth of a Nation" while African-American students listened to a guest speaker who describe the horrors of lynching. The "Why don't you wake up?" scene was also good. But the movie needed better pacing. The first 20 minutes could have been condensed down to 5. We didn't need to hear the entire Stokely Carmichael speech, or watch Ron and Patrice dance together for an entire song. I kept thinking, "and there were executives that worried that 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' would slow down 'The Wizard of Oz.' What would they think of this?" Overall, I felt this movie would have been a lot better if the director was constrained to using only 98 minutes of film. There was just too much padding here.