Desert Bayou (2007)
82 %
Reviews Counted: 22 Fresh: 18 Rotten:4 Average Rating: 6.7/10
Consensus:
Although the presentation is sometimes clumsy, the compelling interviews and story make Desert Bayou always informative and enthralling.
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Theatrical Release: Oct 5, 2007 Limited
Synopsis: After the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of black evacuees were unwittingly transported to Utah, a state where only one percent of its residents were black in 2005. Featuring interviews with Master P, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and Dr. Beverly Wright, DESERT BAYOU chronicles the... [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
Starring: Shmuley Boteach, Master P, Beverly Wright
Director: Alex LeMay
Screenwriter: Thomas G. Lemmer
Story: Michael Reynolds
Producer: Alex LeMay, Jimmy Finkl, Mike Russell, Marybeth Mazzone
Composer: Geno Lenardo
Screenwriter: Thomas G. Lemmer
Story: Michael Reynolds
Producer: Alex LeMay, Jimmy Finkl, Mike Russell, Marybeth Mazzone
Composer: Geno Lenardo
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
A fascinating glimpse at the almost endless obstacles given to Katrina survivors...
Comment
01/27/08
Top Critic
[Director] LeMay earns points for his balanced presentation of key figures on both sides.
11/13/07
Top Critic
There is undeniable power to the central dilemma of human beings at a crossroads.
10/26/07
Top Critic
Screenwriter Thomas Lemmer and director Alex LeMay appear to have some sort of agenda or ax to grind.
10/25/07
Desert Bayou is at its most compelling when it stops preachifying and focuses on the lives of two troubled families.
10/25/07
Top Critic
People rarely enter into audacious commitments with such unforeseeable consequences. For me, it casts Utah in a new and, surprisingly, positive light.
10/22/07
The result is by turns sad, infuriating, frustrating and cautiously hopeful.
10/18/07
Does great justice to the appalling aftermath of the biggest natural disaster to hit America in our lifetime.
10/12/07
LeMay's approach is a clumsily obvious one which demeans everything by turning the men's experiences into a kind of reality-TV soap opera.
10/12/07
A scathing documentary baring a nation into deep denial about lingering buried injustices and inequities which rose to the surface exposed to the light of day, in the wake of the Katrina floods.
10/09/07
The failure of our current administration to act openly and efficiently in a time of crisis gets another documentary close-up in Alex LeMay's humanistic and provocative Desert Bayou.
10/05/07
There are thousands of untold stories still left to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It's worth hearing the ones Alex LeMay shares in this compassionate, if somewhat underdeveloped, documentary.
10/05/07
Top Critic
Feels less like a revelatory feature film than several shorts strung together.
10/05/07
Top Critic
A fascinating and guardedly hopeful tale about race, class, religion and geography in American life.
10/04/07
Top Critic
Succeeds in furthering the much-needed dialogue on a defining event in our current political moment.
10/04/07
The lengthy and often heartbreaking interview sequences in the second half ultimately reveal a story that is, metaphorically at least, a tad less black-and-white.
10/03/07
Top Critic
A damning documentary which exposes FEMA's wholesale failings while depicting a nation still deep in denial and willing to look the other way despite the ongoing suffering of a long-marginalized segment of society.
10/03/07
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