Critic Reviews

Adams displays terrific range and an incandescent screen presence as she effortlessly incarnates Shante over a 10-year period, from puberty to young motherhood.

A well-acted, inspiring story of female empowerment, the captivating “Roxanne Roxanne” is as much about survival and the bonds of family as it is about busting rhymes.

It’s a vivid and unusually honest drama about the pain and bravado that were the fuel of hip-hop.

A film that breaks the musical biopic mold in ways that are sometimes frustrating and frequently exhilarating.

Telling this story with a deep specificity, Larnell does the artist proud by artfully using his camera to capture a woman forging her identity through her art. He and Adams make a formidable team and finely stamp their own mark on the hip-hop movie genre.

By shaping Roxanne Roxanne as a character profile, Larnell accentuates his actors’ performances and crafts a nuanced community portrait, two strengths exhibited in his delightful first feature, "Cronies."

What distinguishes Roxanne Roxanne, a sensitively observed new movie with a dynamite performance by Chanté Adams, is that it marries a traditional hip-hop biopic, a form long dominated by male rappers, with a more idiosyncratic and deeply felt slice of life.

One presumes that Michael Lerner's sense of emphasis is meant to humanize Shanté, defining her apart from the fame she achieved, but this stratagem backfires as Roxanne Roxanne mires itself in scenes of speechifying domestic strife.

Michael Larnell’s flinty and uplifting film of the early days of Lolita “Roxanne Shanté” Gooden, the Queen of Queensbridge, a mid-80s fury who became a years-in-the-making “overnight success” and role model, lives on grit and heart and some terrific performances by Chanté Adams, Nia Long and Oscar winner Mahershala Ali.

The film may not end on a tragic note, but in attempting a gritty portrayal of Shanté’s little-known private life, Roxanne Roxanne forgets her genius, as so many other people did back in the day.