Get on the Bus (1996)

Excellent, smart action film.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Spike Lee's "Get On the Bus" sees a group of African-American men boarding a bus to Washington, DC. Once there they hope to attend the Million Man March. The brainchild of Louis Farrakhan, the event was staged in an attempt to draw attention to the various social and economic ills plaguing the African-American community.Much "African American art" between the period of 1985-1995 took aim at what was perceived to have been a failure in black manhood (the March itself excluded women). Black problems were seen to be exclusively a "black problem", and one which could be fixed if only black males "became better role models", "stopped blaming whites", "stopped engaging in crime" and "picked themselves up by their bootstraps". Blacks, in other words, should improve their conditions, a stance which radical African American activist Carl Dix would mock: "Black youth pulling up their pants doesn't stop factories moving half way around the world. Don't treat results as if they're causes!" Lee's "Get On The Bus" is another tract which ignores systems and mistakes results and causes. His film's bus is filled with various characters, all of whom are stereotypes. And so we meet the wise black man, the religious black man, the gay black man, the hard working black man, the young artist, the middle-aged actor, the Jewish bus driver, the homophobe, the civil worker, the mixed race black man, the tough guy, the bad father, the petty criminal, the sensitive guy etc. After he sets up various preconceptions and clichés, Lee then reverses them by employing various countercliches. By its end, "Bus" posits black progress as being dependent upon the negotiation of conflicting attitudes, and the weathering of both generational shifts and divisions within black communities. The film's opening sequence, which conveys all the film's themes in a concise manner, exemplifies this. Here we see shots of an African in chains, whilst the lyrics to Michael Jackson's "On The Line" unfold: "No sense pretending it's over, hard times just don't go away, you must take that chip off your shoulder, open up and have some faith. Nothing good ever comes easy, all good things come in due time, have something to believe in, open your mind." "Get On The Bus" sports fine performances by Charles S. Dutton and Wendell Pierce, the latter playing a Republican businessman who is comically thrown off Lee's bus (another Republican stays on). The rest of Lee's cast are unconvincing, largely due to a heavy handed, overly didactic screenplay. The film was shot on a tiny budget over the course of 18 days.6/10 – Worth one viewing.

Another FINE effort by America's most UNDERrated filmmaker. His knowledge on the subject of racism is STAGGERING, and IMPRESSES me on more than one level. Accusations that Lee is really just a devious little racist, a poisonous dwarf who opportunistically exploits Hollywood's Affirmative Action system to make movies of inferior quality is utter NONSENSE, mere Right-Wing propaganda. The very notion that Lee would resort to misusing the current climate of political correctness in America in order to produce hate-filled anti-white movies is simply FALSE and malicious.Some of Lee's detractors even go so far as to suggest that GOTB glorifies African-Americans, while putting down other races: obviously, another FALSEHOOD disseminated by people who are AGAINST peaceful co-existence between different races in America and elsewhere.My favourite scene in the movie is a lengthy dialogue early on between the rich black Republican and the others in the bus. The views presented by that man are simply WRONG - all across the board. 100% UNTRUE. He LACKS education, unlike the brilliantly INFORMED guys who quite DESERVEDLY throw him off the bus.TERRIFIC performances, and an INTELLIGENT script make for a viewing experience that has been RARELY rivaled by any political movies made since.I also want to point out the incessant LIES that the Million-Man March had only 80,000 people taking part in it!(And now all you have to do is take the antonyms of all the words written in capital letters...)So what message does Lee send here? If someone doesn't agree with your political views, you simply apply violence and throw him off the bus. I thought the movie said "get ON the bus"...?Apparently, Mr.Lee is for bus-segregation after all, i.e. is no different than those KKK lunatics before him: the bus is only for those blacks who are in line with the Democratic Party's line of thinking. So much for "freeing the slaves"...The end-credits: "This movie was entirely financed by black people." And distributed and marketed by a major Hollywood studio run by Jews and whites whom Farrakhan despises...

I can't forget about the extraordinary Do The Right Thing though.Get On The Bus follows the bus trip of a group of brothers on their way to the Million Man March. The acting is top of the line. The actor playing Evan Junior is a perfect match for his character. He turns in one of the greatest performances. The script is perfect and it only proves to be stronger when you remember that the film was shot in sequence. Which leads me to another point. Anyone with even a small amount of film-making understanding knows that it would have been hell to shoot this film in 35mm, so Spike Lee recorded in a smaller print and had it blown up. The result is a film that's almost documentary style but works perfectly.Throughout the course of the film, Spike Lee introduces us to various personifications of the black man. Notice I used the word personifications, not stereotypes. We have a self hating brother, who is picked up halfway through the trip, who puts down on black schools and colleges. We have a highly homophobic brother who's loud and arrogant at the same time. We have a Muslim brother who has no lines but is integral even without lines. There are black republicans along on the trip. Two black homosexuals. And to top it off it's filmed entirely on a bus trip except for a few scenes which Spike Lee stated were on a sound stage.Great film. 9/10

This movie is a modest effort by Spike Lee. He is capable of much more than this movie.Get on the Bus while apparenly anti racist, does nothing but berate whites and degrade the black status quo. The plot of this movie is about a group of black men who travel on a bus to Louis Farrakhan's million man march. The bus has every type of person you could imagine:gay, Muslim, gangbanger and the Uncle Tom(He is thrown off the bus though). There was one only white person on the bus. He was accused of being a racist the minute he got on the bus to drive. Despite him being a jew and the fact that he explained is situation he ended up being a racist and leaving the bus.I hate to say it but films like this need to realize their own hipocracy and rienforcation of steryotypes. This should not be seen as a triumph but a sad disappointment. You may think I am a racist for writing this but I mean well. Better luck next time Spike.