"Fearless, brilliant and distrubingly hilarious," raved Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly. And Curt Holman of Creative Loafing promised a film loaded with "cutting wit" and "visionary imagination."
Fearless? What's so brave about taking on the depraved Confederacy? Ooooh, now you've pissed off David Duke. Hilarious? I laughed, once. Of course, the same joke, told over and over again, tends to lose its effectiveness.
Spike Lee produced "CSA," which boasts a great premise but callow execution. Seems I was led astray, yet again, by the rapturous praise of guilt-ridden whites.
As for the politics of the movie, it takes a predictably narrow view of white Southerners. As a white Southerner who's quite happy that the Union prevailed in the War Between the States, I nonetheless doubt slavery would remain an institution today if the secessionists had won (as the film postulates). Oh wait, I'm forgetting that no civilization is more evil than our own, a point made with very little subtlety in "CSA."
You're better served renting "Bamboozled," directed by Spike Lee (if for nothing else than the inspired Tommy Hilfiger parody).
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