Reception
| Professional reviews | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | (61/100) |
| Rotten Tomatoes | (80%) |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmovie | |
| Entertainment Weekly | (A−) |
| Roger Ebert | |
| ReelViews | |
| Empire | |
| Total Film | |
| Film4 | |
The film received positive reviews from critics with an 80% "Certified Fresh" approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert gave the film 3 and a half stars out of four, writing "The film is a shade over three hours long. I appreciated the extra time, which allows us to feel the passage of prison months and years."
Forbes commentator Dawn Mendez referred to the character of John Coffey as a "'magic Negro' figure"—a term coined by Spike Lee to describe a stereotypical fictional black person depicted in a fictional work as a "saintly, nonthreatening" person whose purpose in life is to solve a problem for or otherwise further the happiness of a white person. Lee himself berated the character as one of several "super-duper, magical Negro" depicting a skewed version of the black male, claiming it was due to the prominence of white decision makers in the media companies.
Read more about this topic: The Green Mile (film)
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“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
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