My wife gone left me... and now I'm all alone... and to make matters worse... I watched Black Snake Moan!

Rating: 4/10 (30 December 2007)

Unless you're a big fan of diminutive cutie Christina Ricci, and are desperate to see her wearing very little, there's a good chance that you won't stay the distance with Black Snake Moan. At over two hours long, this slow-as-molasses Southern-style tosh is enough to give anyone the blues, despite its promisingly salacious storyline.
Ricci plays Rae, the nymphomaniac wife of soldier Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), who screws around whilst her man is off serving his country (her insatiable lust is apparently the result of having been abused as a child).
After one of her drug-fuelled quests for indiscriminate sex, Rae is beaten up and left on a dirt track, where she is found by a god-fearing blues-man, Lazerus (Samuel L. Jackson), who takes the wayward hussy to his home, nurses her back to health, and sets about curing her of her wickedness (by chaining her up, preaching to her, and singing the blues).
Lazerus and Rae eventually form a (platonic) friendship, but when Ronnie returns home unannounced (discharged due to high anxiety), discovers from a friend that his wife is a slut, and finds her shacking up with Lazerus, he loses his cool, grabs the nearest gun and goes looking for the old musician.
Given the right treatment, this could have been a delightfully trashy slice of exploitation, but with earnest direction from Craig Brewer that shows no hint of being tongue-in-cheek, a dreadful performance from Timberlake, and umpteen laughable Southern stereotypes played completely straight by the stars, Black Snake Moan is rather dull and ultimately disappointing (except for those who are only watching in order to check out Ms. Ricci's knockers).