American Pimp

Hilarious nonsense. Everyone in this is an idiot.

Delving into the shadowy subculture of illegal prostitution, the Hughes Brothers elicit shockingly candid discussion from the flamboyant gallery of rogues and miscreants they have assembled. The blaxploitation influence on the film making style is apt: these pimps are stars in their own minds, and the Hughes Brothers present their world authentically, without judgement. It lacks sociological complexity, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

Pimp. It's a noun. It's a verb. It's a way of life.

These scumbags acting serious or being honest to the camera somehow loops around to comedy. One of those character studies where you're not sure if the subjects know how dumb or abnormal they are.

Fascinating. Killer.

Pretty rough around the edges, but the Hughes brother have an infectious passion for the cinema and manage to break our preconceptions of the pimp world by putting in the phenomena in the context of 1940s B-movies as well as 70s blaxploitation.

Interesting. Although, I still question why pimps need to have so much bling.

Amusing.

Entertaining in an odd way.

Great documentary. Actual pimps discuss their work and personal lives, how it's done, etc. Intensely interesting.

Bling for nothing.

While the image these subjects want to present is always of themselves as being great at imprinting women, it gets slightly more interesting when one of them talks about pimps having to “recondition” their own masculinity so as to be able to accept having their girls sleep with a lot of men. Even so, the insights are rather meagre, and the characters not quite amusing enough, so that the whole thing starts to feel a little repetitive, despite moving through a few different aspects of “the game”.