Sharp and entertaining with a total disregard to the rules, although it pulls it off for the best part.

Rating: 6/10 (3 November 2007)

In Black Snake Moan, you have a film that covers so much ground that I don't think even it realises where it's gone and what it's done. The film goes through so many emotions and inflicts so much pain, regret and suspense on its characters that by the time it's entering its final act it doesn't know weather to keep on the straight and narrow screwball comedy road it wants to go down or if it wants to develop into a darker, more tragic film involving deaths of characters we've come to actually love but this is what makes Black Snake Moan the experience it is.
The next man may be able to stand up and say that he or she has seen more films than I have but Black Snake Moan is, to me, a one of a kind film. It manages to integrate comedy, sometimes black, sometimes screwball and sometimes teen sex; horror; romance and tragedy. Even if Black Snake Moan never quite makes up its mind which of these its going to settle with, the content and chemistry the film has on screen with its audience works quite well. Rae (Ricci) is a girl who certainly doesn't break any boundaries in terms of how we look at women in films or how they are portrayed: she's sort of a cross between a femme fatale from a film noir; a dumb blonde from a teen sex comedy and a porn star from, well, a porn film.
Rae may dress in nothing but a top too small for her and little white panties that get progressively dirtier but her character grows in leaps and bounds. I said that Black Snake Moan is a number of things and one thing it certainly includes that impressed me was its character development. Ronnie (Timberlake) is Rae's partner at the very beginning and gets sent off to 'a' war thus interrupting their romance. This is shown in tandem with Lazarus' (Jackson) scenario and how he's lost his love through that old down and outer divorce since his partner is no longer in love with him but seemingly with a long time friend of the two. Thus, the set up is complete and the audience are invited to 'side' with a character: which situation best fits you? Perhaps if you're male you identify with Lazarus, female means Rae is your girl. What's interesting is that under this smokescreen of genres and little outfits for Ricci to wear and get everyone all excited is a statement: Rae is lost after Ronnie leaves; she goes to parties and desperately tries to have fun, forget her troubles and attempts to perhaps fall in love again but she only finds more pain and anguish at her attempts to fit back into society again and regain a sex life. Lazarus' experience is more that of playing the blues and drinking whiskey; although reminiscent of a film noir, the mise-en-scene and music work well to tell us what he's feeling.
Black Snake Moan also does the clever thing and leaves the setting ambiguous. The cars we see everyone drive around in a reminiscent to those massive American cars you get in the 1940s and 50s but it is a poor area of Deep South America after all. Rae wears outfits reminiscent of the 1960s and 70s at first with her teenybopper top displaying the confederate flag, making her look like a character out of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre but she later matures through what she wears: a dress. Where Ronnie goes off to to fight is also interesting. I said 'a' war earlier on; is it Gulf War II or the War on Terror? Or is it perhaps Vietnam? Nothing is really set in stone creating a timeless, 'could happen anywhere, anytime' atmosphere which was quite clever. From memory, I don't recall anyone using cell phones or computers but again, is this just due to the poor area the film is set?
Black Snake Moan is a film that has fun with itself. It gets Christiana Ricci wearing next to nothing, it combines loads of genres, it has fun with its setting and resembles a screwball comedy at times what with Rae on the leash, standing in a seductive pose in the middle of a field  that twinned with the fact Lazarus has to chase her around the farm now and again to stop her escaping; all of it similar to the way Henry Fonda had to chase Barbara Stanwyck around that boat in 'The Lady Eve'. Black Snake Moan is a film that's fun but it's smart because it knows it's fun. It's also smart because it knows what it's doing and how it's going to deliver it: comedy in its portrayal of women; tragedy in its lost love narrative and horror in Rae's flashbacks. I could recommend Black Snake Moan as a comedy, as a love story or as a film in which people are just trying to find out who they are; on those notes, it's good enough to be a success in my opinion.