In short:<br /><br />Spike Lee clearly has a lot on his mind. He's thinking about racism color-ism, media and hegemony, consumerism and capitalism, religion, sexism, 'hetero-sexism', politics of the drug war etc etc...<br /><br />That level of consciousness on is own is great. I think it is a blessing that more and more people are choosing to critically examine fundamental aspects of our daily lives; the silent and invisible forces that govern our societies. However, just because Lee is making contentious films does not make him a good film-maker.<br /><br />What comes across in "Jungle Fever" is a superficial understanding of these socio-political forces. This is largely the result of two main failures:<br /><br />firstly, Lee is simply trying too hard. He seems to be desperately trying to accommodate every political/social statement he can think of into the 90mins. And as such, the end result seems confused and irresolute as he allows himself no time to develop characters that can fully embody the ideas he hopes to present. And so he exhausts stereotypes and we are left with rushed testimonies and very loaded dialogs. The end result is very staged and unrealistic.<br /><br />Secondly, by attempting to make statements about such a wide variety of societal functions, he appears to have no concrete or original interpretation of the social/political issues presented. What comes across is a puddle of regurgitated non-sense. You feel that he bought an elementary level sociology text book and spewed out all 500 pages.<br /><br />These are highly problematic features because the artistry of film is sacrificed and the work is transformed into a loudspeaker for the voice of the voice of the filmmaker. He is unable to distance himself from the work, and allow it to speak for itself.<br /><br />It functions neither as a piece of art nor a sound political argument.<br /><br />Although I still do appreciate Lee bringing up these important issues, I must say:<br /><br />Two thumbs down.