Ranking Spike Lee's Movies According to How Much They Pissed People Off

Few major American filmmakers have stirred up as much controversy as Spike Lee has in his lengthy directorial career. His greatest films, like Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, continue to resonate decades after their release. These films are still a part of the conversation about race in America, though there are over a dozen newer Spike Lee joints seperating us from their release.

But take a look back at the initial critical response to Lee's work, and you'll find a different narrative than what you might expect. We may rememberJungle Fever as controversial, yet critics applauded Lee for his deeply human take on race relations; it's nearly impossible to find anything other than praise for Lee's story about a black man dating a white woman. Mo' Better Blues, on the other hand, was attacked for its sexual and ethnic stereotyping, and even drew public outrage from the Anti-Defamation League. Today, the film is remembered as a solid jazz film, if it's remembered at all.

To review Lee's films with an eye toward their initial reception reveals the critical distance the years put between a film's initial impact and the narratives we contsruct after the fact, as we assemble retrospectives and build tidy narratives for college classes. You'll likely be surprised by our Ranking Spike Lee’s Movies According to How Much They Pissed People Off.

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Representative reaction: "The film's Carmichael family may be monopolized by men: dad Woody (Delroy Lindo) and four rusty-butt sons, Clinton (Carlton Williams), Wendell (Sharif Rashid), Nate (Chris Knowings) and Joseph (TseMach Washington). But it's mom Carolyn (Alfre Woodard) and daughter Troy (Zelda Harris, 9, in a star-making portrayal) who keep this family in line. Troy slams a bully—Lee, sporting an Afro, has the role—upside the head with a bat when he picks on her baby brother. It's through Troy that Lee tells his story. On his seven-feature resume, there are films that are more ambitious (Malcolm X), confrontational (Do the Right Thing) and erotic (She's Gotta Have It). But the fullness of characterization in Crooklyn shows a new maturity in Lee. Troy isn't the only one who comes of age." —Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

With Crooklyn, critics saw a move toward a more nuanced, human style of filmmaking from Lee. Prior to this, Lee was seen as an artist with big ideas that could either lead him to create visceral masterpieces or rough diatriabes. The only consenus criticism of the uneven, but charming film was that it didn't feel like a Spike Lee joint. As New York Times critic Janet Maslin put it, "None of the edgy, confrontational drama or stark handsomeness of Mr. Lee's other work distinguishes this noisy, crowded family story." Sounds like critics want the diatribes back. Or do they?

Representative reaction: "The film probes important and intriguing questions, even if the characters are not explored as thoroughly as they might have been. Mr. Lee has said he worries about how black audiences will receive the film, which opens today at the Cinema Studio 1. He need not limit his concern to one audience; his characters will interest everyone. Stripped of some of the distractions of this presentation, their story has a touch of the classic. These people are not victims of blind forces; they make choices, defend them and grow in understanding, not always happily, as a result. Their story would be more enjoyable in a more polished film, but it has a power that is not dissipated by this one's weaknesses." —D. J. R. Bruckner, New York Times

Lee's first movie was universally praised at first, but within a few years the critical community splintered. The film's portrayal of femininity has become more contentious than it was in 1986, and the fact that Lee made the film for less than $200,000 no longer shields the film from negative criticism. bell hooks, who wrote the most resonant feminist critique of the film, spoke to this in Talking Black: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1988), "There has been no widespread feminist response to the film precisely because of the overwhelming public celebration of that which is new, different, and exciting in the work." She goes on to critique the "whose pussy is this" scene, and the way it discredits the movie as a feminist work.

Representative reaction: "Goddamned Spike Lee. The guy is probably one of the 10 most talented filmmakers of his generation—for his energy, his ambition and that climatic scene in Do the Right Thing alone—and this is what he does with it? A clumsy, oh-well story about the moral quandary of a drug-dealing recidivist who more or less deserves to go to jail? There are pieces of 25th Hour that are exhilarating—a scene in which Monty busts on every ethnic group in New York; a club scene where Philip Seymour Hoffman finds the guts to take Anna Paquin up on a dare—but they only suggest how much life is missing from the rest of the movie." —Jeff Stark, Salon

Critics were split on the quality of 25th Hour when it premiered. Depending on who you read, this was "the first great 21st century movie about a 21st century subject " or "a plodding moral fable." Even the most favorable reviews found the film impersonal, lacking the intimate energy of Spike Lee's greatest works. Even the emotionally charged backdrop of post-September 11th New York was just that, a background, as much a part of the story as the default painted woodland backdrop is integral to the plot of a middle school musical.

Representative reaction: "In its attempt to define a moment, Get On the Bus was clearly made with an eye on the future, and it may take some years before its quality can be accurately assessed. From a 1996 viewpoint, the film has integrity of purpose, yet it also has a certain narrowness of spirit. As a political statement, it preaches only to those who agree...But maybe Lee is right. Perhaps his unwillingness to make things neat and please every white critic is the great virtue of Get On the Bus. By tossing out all these voices and opinions, Lee and screenwriter Reggie Rock Blythewood have created both a time capsule and a movie audiences will talk about." —Mick LaSalle, San Fransisco Chronicle

Though many reviewers were put off by the sacchrine symbolism and perhaps just a tad too easy message, almost every major critic was onboard with the mission of Get on the Bus. There was a general sense in the criticism of the day that this was a film created to be as much a historical document as a movie. The flaws largely get a pass, as critics appreciate the challenge of balancing making a film both for the cinema and for high school history class.

Representative reaction: "Setting the record straight after so many years and so many movies is not necessarily a simple undertaking, and this film sometimes stumbles under its heavy, self-imposed burden of historical significance...If you're tempted to roll your eyes, recall that such speeches—on the subjects of liberty and democracy and the mortal threat to those ideals posed by Hitler and his army—have always been a staple of all but the most hardboiled and cynical World War II movies. And in this one, as in Days of Glory, the high-minded talk and theme-announcing scenes illuminate a thorny and crucial paradox, namely that the countries fighting against totalitarian race-hatred had some serious race problems of their own." —A.O. Scott, New York Times

Summary: Similarly to Get on the Bus, Miracle at St. Anna was evaluated both on its merits as a film and as a cultural artifact. Miracle at St. Anna lacks the easy charm and ingenuity of Get on the Bus and indulges in the jingoism and cliches normally associated with World War II films. Though the two two films were considered equally "important," only one of them proved enjoyable to watch.

Representative reaction: "Though Lee's script is sprawling and uneven, the treatment of women and ethnic minorities is more generous and less stereotypical than before. As always, Lee's dynamic direction compensates for the conceptual and script shortcomings, endowing the picture with a sharply vigorous and flamboyant craftsmanship, assisted by frequent lenser Malik Hassan Sayeed, production designer Wynn Thomas and others in the capable crew." —Emanuel Levy, Variety

For a movie that's included in any primer on Spike Lee's body of work, He Got Game's reviews were surprisingly mixed. Critics seemed divided largely because of Lee's sharp focus. There are many stories to be extracted from the world of basketball recruiting and the socioeconomic conditions of Coney Island, but Lee homed in on the father-son story at the heart of the film. (He should've cut the prostitution subplot, though.) Critics who were more intrigued by other aspects of the film's world were dissapointed, while those who bought the generational conflict went home happy.

Representative reaction: "Lee made Red Hook Summer out of his own pocket the way he wanted it. That lack of a filter helps make the noticeably low-budget effort into an earnest, occasionally powerful work, but also one routinely afflicted by sloppiness. Lee's unwillingness to compromise hurts the movie as much as it helps it, providing a continuous reminder of the better efforts that came before. Littered with bursts of confusion and anger, Red Hook Summer continually falls prey to histrionics that turn it into something Lee most certainly did not want—a cheap imitation of Tyler Perry theatrics, where one-dimensional characterizations and slovenly dramatic turns take the place of emotional credibility." —Erick Kohn, IndieWire

The critical conversation around Red Hook Summer was incredibly similar to the one that surrounded She's Gotta Have It, which is to say process was just as important as product. Lee financed Red Hook Summer with a mixture of his own cash and Kickstarter funds. Critics were a bit colder regarding Lee's business model this time around, as his long career between She's Gotta Have It and Red Hook Summer left many wondering why he went back to his bootstrapping roots. Unlike She's Gotta Have It, the content of Red Hook Summer didn't get much ink in reviews, largely because critics didn't seem to find it that interesting.

Representative reaction: "Spike Lee apparently likes keeping a lower profile these days. No longer the angry young man that made School Daze and Do the Right Thing, Lee has matured into a much subtler force behind the camera, content to let the story unfold before him without thrusting himself into the spotlight as well. In fact, if not for the understated (yet ever-present) 'a Spike Lee joint' gracing the posters for his recent movies, you might not even realize films like The 25th Hour and Inside Man—his latest—were his 'joints' at all. Then again, there are always a few giveaways: references to baseball, a jazz-heavy musical score, and numerous references to race and racial divisiveness...Sounds like pretty standard stuff, and sure enough, the plot offers little in the way of real twists until the end. Where Inside Man somewhat separates itself from the formulaic is in Lee's direction, which continuously veers from suspense to comedy to drama and back again, and also the expected pervasive racial overtones. The bank is Lee's representation of New York City as the ultimate melting pot, with Jewish clients, Italian and Chinese customers, black security guards, a Sikh clerk, and just about everything in between. The cast's racial makeup isn't integral to the plot, but adds another dimension to the film." —Pete Vonder Haar, Film Threat

The consensus: Inside Man succeeds as a big studio thriller. Part of that success meant subduing Lee's need for social discourse in favor of the plot's action. Though race is part of the film, Lee keeps the story's mechanics front and center. As a result, critical reaction was equally muted. The discussion of race in the film was viewed as a hallmark of Lee's authorship, an afterthought, rather than an attempt at starting a conversation.

Representative reaction: "There's a great deal of passion in Spike Lee's three-hour-and-twenty-minute adaptation of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, but it's not an artist's passion; the responses Lee aims for are the clear, pedagogically effective ones rather than the disturbing, irresolvable ones that Malcom's own account evokes on almost every page. Malcolm, who achieved fame in the early sixties as a compelling spokesman for the black-pride philosophy of the Nation of Islam, is an unlikely hero for a big-studio prestige picture: he begins as a predatory street criminal, becomes a studious Muslim ascetic, and fulfills himself as a scourge. The movie is disappointingly impersonal; it doesn't provide readers of the autobiography anything like a fresh vision of its remarkable subject. Lee assumes Malcolm's greatness and then simply illustrates it. His approach isn't radical enough to give shape and coherence to Malcolm's internal conflicts; and the ponderous rhythms of the great-man bio-pic only emphasize the impossibility of rendering this story with conventional movie-narrative means." —Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker

The only controversy surrounding Lee's Malcolm X biopic was just how uncontroversial it was. Though the lengthy, by-the-numbers film was well-reviewed, many critics were expecting more fire in the belly of Malcolm X. To repeat Rafferty's words above: "Lee assumes Malcolm's greatness and simply illustrates it." Of course, that in and of itself is radical.

Representative reaction: "What, exactly, drew Lee to an Oldboy remake? You can't really tell from watching the film. It's a labyrinthine mystery that doesn't seem to exist on planet Earth; it's hermetic, deliberately artificial, focused on its own fancy misfortunes and old scores, waiting for settlement. Brolin broods and suffers extremely well. As the mysterious string-puller, Sharlto Copley (District 9) slinks and oozes and oozes and slinks, and continues to deliver a teensy bit too much every second, in action or in repose. The revenge in Oldboy is neither sweet nor sour; it's just drab." —Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

You have to hand it to Lee for pissing off an entirely new demographic with this film. Fans of the original Korean film, which apparently includes the entire critical community, have not been happy with the remake. The general consensus is that Lee sacrifices the internal life of the first film for CGI and gore and loses quite a lot in the process. Unless you ask The New Yorker's Richard Brody, who was able to locate the radical politics lurking somewhere in the picture's guts.

Representative reaction: "What this movie demonstrates more than anything else is Lee's own ambivalence. In one scene someone asks a clocker if he knows what Alzheimer's is. He says, 'It's some kinda beer?' With Lee's superiority complex he can't keep from disdaining stupidity wherever he finds it. He seems to hold the two opposing views that people—even oppressed people—should take responsibility for their lives, but also that the world's unfortunates—especially oppressed people—should blame society for their victimhood. Until Lee figures out what he really thinks, his movies are going to express more confusion than clarity." —Barbara Shulgasser, San Fransisco Examiner

Even though similar worlds have been used to promote serious cultural discourse in recent years, Lee's take on urban drug culture stirred far less of a conversation than you might think. Clockers release was not accompanied by Wire-level social revelation. Clockers was viewed a well adapted tale that, while compelling, didn't bring anything new to a sadly well trod conversation.

Representative reaction: "Despite that atmosphere of lethal antagonism, Mr. Lee has shown the ability to write Italian characters as complex and varied as his black creations. And that artistic even-handedness has brought an integral tension and poignance to films like Jungle Fever...Still, Mr. Lee said, he does not view the Italian and black communities in Jungle Fever as equally culpable, morally equivalent. Flipper's father may insult his child for crossing the racial line, but he will not exile or attack him. Even Drew Purify, it develops, is the child of a mixed marriage, who was accepted and raised in the black hemisphere of her bifurcated world. 'It's very rare,' Mr. Lee said, 'for a black family to disown a member for marrying someone white. This is not to say we view these couplings with open arms. But when you're oppressed, when you're at the bottom of a socio-economic system, you have a different perspective.'" —Samuel G. Freedman, New York Times

Going into a piece like this, you might expect Jungle Fever to come in near the top. With Jungle Fever, Lee proved that a thoughtfully constructed tale can diffuse potential controversy about a touchy subject. Critics couldn't help but heap praise on this film; Lee was tackling a controversial subject, but he did so with humanity and passion in equal measure. The most common criticism of Jungle Fever was that the main characters lacked the compassionate contstruction of the supporting characters because they were walking symbols. As Roger Ebert put it, "It's as if Lee himself, as a screenwriter, could see these characters only as stereotypes—could not, or would not, get inside of them."

Representative reaction: "Spike Lee isn't interested in truth—or coherence, for that matter. Instead, wearing the Professional Provocateur cap he's so maddeningly attached to, Lee is at his most bombastic: In this hotheaded sociological fantasy, he attempts to link the disco glitz of Studio 54, the punk scene of CBGB, the ethnic insularity of Italian Americans, the bloody shooting spree of a madman who taunted the police, the effect of sizzling heat on city asphalt, and the sexual problems between a sweaty Bronx local named Vinny (John Leguizamo) and his frustrated wife, Dionna (Mira Sorvino), into one rattling chain of urban hysteria. The links don't hold, broken by the kind of addled deductions (women are blown away because one guy in the Bronx cheats on his wife?), race baiting, and sexual nutsiness with which Lee tends to undermine his own strongest artistic interests. An intro and coda by newspaper columnist and self-created character Jimmy Breslin—a 'Dead End' street sign positioned showily behind him—adds to the manufactured swagger." —Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

Summer of Sam was talked about like a film created with an interest in everything except for the subject at hand. From the title, you'd imagine that Lee's film is about the murders committed by serial killer Son of Sam in New York during the late '70s. It turns out that these events are merely a backdrop for a loose exploration of sex, race, and culture in New York at the time. Lee weaves his way through a number of controversial subjects, but the spastic nature of the film prevents the coherent storytelling needed for a coherent argument, which would in turn produce coherent controversy.

Representative reaction: "School Daze, with its pompous patchwork plot, is an arrogant, humorless, sexist mess. Based on Lee's days at Atlanta's Morehouse College, it pits the light-skinned "Wannabees" against the dark-skinned "Jigaboos" at make-believe Mission College. It's a juvenile, yet controversial, treatment of an intricate intraracial conflict. Lee, who has condemned Whoopi Goldberg for her blue contact lenses and Michael Jackson for his nose job, seems obsessed by racial cosmetics." —Rita Kempley, Washington Post

School Daze represents the opposite side of the coin from Jungle Fever. Jungle Fever skirted needless controversy thanks to its brilliant construction, School Daze invited criticism with its rough edges and incomplete vision. Controversy without a clear statement is viewed, rightly or wrongly, as cage rattling for the sake of cage rattling. School Daze was received as a film that thought it had a lot to say but ultimately didn't.

Representative reaction: "A new Spike Lee film might be anything at all except dull and conventional, or at least that seemed true until Mo' Better Blues. From characters to camera angles, this story of a self-absorbed jazz trumpeter is one long cliche, the kind that might make his most loyal admirers wince and wonder, ''Spike, what happened?''... Sometimes even his intentions are questionable. When Bleek tells Indigo, ''I want us to have a son,'' why is this treated as new, heroic self-awareness rather than more macho self-absorption? And what could have been going through Spike Lee's mind when he invented the Jewish club owners, Josh and Moe Flatbush, money-grubbing, devious, ugly stereotypes with sharks' smiles?" —Caryn James, New York Times

Lee's jazz picture was viewed as stale and self-indulgent. That much of the film was, as Movieline's Stephen Farber put it, "a stillborn academic exercise," made the offensive moments or caricature all the more off-putting. The few moments of the film that were perceived as overtly racist and sexist came to dominate the conversation of Mo' Better Blues,

Representative reaction: "Do the Right Thing is going to create an uproar—in part because Lee, a middle-class black hoping to capture the anger of the underclass, is thoroughly mixed up about what he's saying. The explosion at the end of the movie, an outburst intimate in scale but truly frightening should divide the audience, leaving some moviegoers angry and vengeful, other sorrowful and chastened...if Spike Lee is a commercial opportunist, he's also paying with dynamite in an urban playground. The response to the movie could get away from him." —David Denby, New York Magazine

To call Denby's reaction "representative" is somewhat unfair. Denby's problematic review wasn't par for the course. That being said, he wasn't alone. Denby, Joe Klein, and several other respected reviewers couldn't help but betray certain prejudices in their largely positive reviews. Still, it's important to look at reviews like Denby's to understand just how controversial this film was. Despite, or perhaps, because of, it's undeniable quality, Do the Right Thing caused the kind of cultural conversation that marks a true masterpiece. Robert Ebert's review got at the conversation in a way that actually reflects the totality of critical reactions to the film:

"Thousands of people already have seen it at preview screenings, and everywhere I go, people are discussing it. Some of them are bothered by it; they think it will cause trouble. Others feel the message is confused. Some find it too militant, others find it the work of a middle-class director who is trying to play street-smart. All of those reactions, I think, simply are different ways of avoiding the central fact of this film, which is that it comes closer to reflecting the current state of race relations in America than any other movie of our time."

Representative reaction: "What happens when a satirist remains righteously aloof can be viewed in the new Spike Lee 'joint,' Bamboozled, which is one of the least entertaining satires ever made. Although Lee launches the film with a voice-over definition of the form, the movie he has written and directed hardly qualifies: It's more like a Faustian melodrama that degenerates into a finger-wagging-and tedious-diatribe against Uncle Tom-ism. Bamboozled confirms Lee's status as our reigning cultural commissar, and cultural commissars don't traditionally nourish satire-they smother it. The joke, a good one, is that liberal whites, initially horrified, come to adore the show: Down deep, Lee suggests, they're enchanted by this nostalgic vision of stereotypical and subservient Negroes, especially when the racism is packaged as sophisticated irony...In light of the series' runaway success, De-La becomes a 'grateful Negro' who sobs while receiving prizes and fawns over white celebrities. It then falls to his stern assistant, Sloan (Jada Pinkett-Smith), to articulate the ways in which he has betrayed his people; to such leaders as Al Sharpton and Johnnie Cochran to lead the inevitable protests; and to the innate sense of pride in his stars to overcome the desperation and self-loathing that first impelled them to 'blacken up.'" —David Edelstein, Slate

Great satirists take the edge off of potential controversy to deliver their message through wit and clever humor. Lee may be capable of making great films, but he may not be capable of great satire. As a result, Lee succeeded with Bamboozled in making a film that made viewers angry while failing to make them think about all of issues that prompted him to make the film in the first place.

Representative reaction: "Lee is too humorless—too doggedly, rantingly ambitious—to settle for anything as simple as mere entertainment. He also seems to have forgotten how to direct actors, perhaps because he's only interested in them as mouthpieces. Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), the heroic informer, is thrown to the wolves by his racist boss (Woody Harrelson). Facing an SEC hearing, he invokes the name of Frank Wills, the black security guard who uncovered the Watergate break-in and died destitute for his troubles. Jack declares that 'Frank Wills and I are one' and claims 'America killed him.' Since when are the perils of high-level informants race-based? Jack also brands his predicament a 'high-tech lynching.' Why is Lee unironically comparing his hero to Clarence Thomas of all people? There's lots more of this stuff, plus predatory lesbians (Kerry Washington plays Jack's mercenary ex) and simpatico Mafia bosses (John Turturro, doing a riff from The Godfather). Corporate America gets it in the face, but La Cosa Nostra, with its admirable record of youth-outreach programs in the inner cities, is treated with kid gloves. Go figure." —Peter Rainer, New York Magazine

Old charges of racism, sexism, and homophobia crop up in numerous reviews of She Hate Me. Writing for The Boston Globe, here's Wesley Morris: "But one doesn't leave She Hate Me certain that Lee has found a greater appreciation for gays, women, or families. Some of these are old complaints. But rather than revise or reconsider his positions, he merely reinforces them."

Unlike other films for which Lee drew similar critcism, this film lacks a particularly compelling message and is just considered bad.

Representative reaction: "It's hard to say exactly at what point during Girl 6 it will hit you that this peek into the world of phone boning is the worst movie Spike Lee has ever made. I'd clock it somewhere between the time Girl 75 (Naomi Campbell) insults a guy whose dick drips—you heard me—and Girl 6 (Theresa Randle) intuits how a child's crippling fall down an elevator shaft mirrors her career descent from actress to phone-sex operator. Prurience and pretentiousness make an unholy pair, no matter who plays matchmaker." —Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Critics have never been okay with the way Spike Lee portrays women. Even Crooklyn and She's Gotta Have It, considered the closest to feminist filmmaking that Lee has ever gotten, drew criticism for indulging old Madonna/whore dichotomies that a sophisticated filmmaker should be far past. It's fitting, then, that Girl 6, Spike Lee's only film since his debut to feature an adult woman protagonist, should be his most poorly received. In this film, all of Lee's worst habits are on display, while the best aspects of his work are largely absent.