Get on the Bus

What makes Get on the Bus extraordinary is the truth and feeling that go into its episodes. Spike Lee and his actors face one hard truth after another, in scenes of great power. Read full review

In Get on the Bus, director and material come together with perfect ease — one of those occasional confluences of subject and strengths that make a moviegoer go, ”Of course!” Of course Spike Lee throws all of his bravado, all his storytelling talents, and all his artistic chutzpah into a movie about last year’s Million Man March. Read full review

Like the march itself--which is only briefly glimpsed--Get On the Bus' is conceived as a challenge to black men to take accountability for their lives. A sermon wrapped in a road movie, at its best it can stir the soul. Read full review

Lee's primary objective is to reflect back and offer a uniquely personal perspective of that single day last October. This viewpoint, which ultimately transcends the movie's flaws, is one of the aspects that makes for a worthwhile two hours. Read full review

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. Read full review

Though Lee's deft expertise keeps things pacy and (mostly) plausible, the material can't avoid a certain predictability and, in the end, a preachy sentimentality. Read full review

Spike Lee's film is about a group of black men traveling from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., for last year's Million Man March. As in the real-life march one year ago today, this convergence of diverse black manhood is what is compelling about the film. Read full review

With its complexity of viewpoints, Get on the Bus has to be seen as one of Spike Lee's most mature visions to date. Read full review

It all has an artless, ephemeral feel, and 20 years from now people will marvel at the fashions, the landscapes and the attitudes it captures like fragile bugs in amber. Read full review

Get On the Bus might just be Spike Lee's best work yet. Read full review

After bowing to Hollywood studio demands with Girl 6, Lee has gone small, lean and provocative again with this smart, multi-layered take on the African-American experience. Read full review

Some of the film's best and most comfortable moments find the bus passengers simply singing together in a show of warm, spontaneous unity. Read full review

A vital regeneration of a filmmaker's talent as well as a bracing and often very funny dramatization of urgent sociopolitical themes, Get on the Bus represents Spike Lee's most satisfying work since Do the Right Thing. Read full review

Shining with freshness and commitment, Get On the Bus is one of the far from overwhelming number of films you owe it to yourself to see in 1996. [16 Oct 1996, p.F1]

Here the director is more self-conscious about his didactic aims, which limits him in some respects, but there's an engaging roughness about his visual approach that keeps this movie footloose and inventive. Read full review

The picture has such a sweet spirit, sly wit and buoyant energy that it seems to disarm potential rancor, fear or contentiousness. [16 Oct 1996, p.1]

There are enough issues here for three films by a perennial provoker like Lee, and critics will undoubtedly accuse him of throwing too much fuel on the fire. But this time, aided by Reggie Rock Bythewood’s thoughtful script, Lee’s ambition pays off. With 15 men squeezed together on a single bus, issues such as racism, homophobia and responsibility are tackled as they would be in real life: fitfully, passionately, derisively and, above all, hilariously. Read full review

Director Spike Lee has made angry films, epic films, even sentimental films. But he's not made anything as heartfelt and finally celebratory as Get on the Bus. [16 Oct 1996, p.F1]

Movies that demand to be seen by everyone -- not only for their entertainment value, but for what they say -- are precious rarities. Spike Lee's Get On the Bus is one of those films. You walk out of it feeling the world's axis has tilted ever so slightly: No matter who you are, or what your perspective was going in, the movie will make you look at last year's Million Man March -- and all of black America -- through different eyes. [16 Oct 1996, p.1D]

Get on the Bus turns out to be a better movie than Malcolm X. With the road-picture format Lee is free at last - liberated to set his own pace and follow his better instincts. [16 Oct 1996, p.E1]

A film that returns the director to the blunt and cutting honesty, pungent observation, and sharply targeted humor that made him so appealing in the first place. [16 Oct 1996, p.D01]

A typically heavy-handed Spike Lee film that makes up for it by being a typically passionate Spike Lee film. [16 Oct 1996, p.C03]

Spike Lee's liveliest, funniest, most confident movie in years, Get On the Bus suggests that he should stick to political confrontations as the basis for his stories. [16 Oct 1996, p.E3]

Young, old, black, white or whatever: This is one Bus you can't afford to miss. [16 Oct 1996, p.1D]

If the movie finally doesn't know when to quit, its flaws are those of enthusiasm and heart. The central character may be a bus, but the story is really saying, "walk a mile in my shoes." [16 Oct 1996]

Whatever its flaws, Get on the Bus is fairly electric with hope and anger. [16 Oct 1996]

It'll hearten anyone who believed Lee had insights and merely needed to find the right vehicle to express them. Bus is that vehicle. [18 Oct 1996, p.1E]