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59 reviews in total

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29 out of 41 people found the following review useful:
120 years worth crammed in to over 9 hours! Amazing!, 18 September 2004

Author: fibreoptic from England

There is nothing quite like Roots and i don't think anything will be done like it again. I first saw this about 5 years ago and since then i've seen it all 3 more times. It is a phenomenal achievement!

*SPOILERS*

Roots starts off around 1750 when an African baby is born called Kunta Kinte and follows his life. He gets enslaved by slavers when he's 15 and is taken to a white supremest America where he is sold at a slave market to a Virginian tobacco business man. From there we follow Kunta all the way through to old age and beyond and after he dies we follow his daughter and when she dies as an old lady we follow her son and so on. Basically the main characters die off and then the newish minor characters become main characters as well as there are new characters which are brought in from time to time. All the while though the black people are slaves and treated as 3rd class citizens. We see how they struggle with their hard life and how some of them are happy to be slaves as they've never known anything else and how some dream of freedom. Over the years and generations we see good white people, indifferent white people and very bad white people. It passes quickly through the war of independence but focuses longer on the civil war mainly because this is the beginning of the end of black slavery in America which leads to the KKK part of Roots.

After watching Roots it really does feel like you have watched 120 years of a families generations. From the beginning where Kunta is born all the way to the end where a very old Chicken George leads his family to a new free life. It is quite mind boggling.

I could write a huge review about this mighty saga but i ain't got the time and i doubt anyone would read it anyway. As a white guy i am ashamed at how white people treated black people so badly even though to a lesser extent that still goes on in the world today.

The story is amazing, the acting is award winning and i have no quips with Roots at all apart from one thing. Everyone ages through this except the amazing ageless Mr Moore. Over a span of around 50 years he doesn't age a day. When he is first introduced he looks about 50 and 50 years later he still looks like 50. I think he must be a Highlander or something! LOL

Of course, Roots was made possible by the writer Alex Haley who was a descendant of Kunta Kinte which is explained at the very end. I recommend Roots very highly. It's for people who enjoy history and an engrossing story. You will also get attached to the characters and feel a sense of loss when one of them die. I've only covered the very basics and left a ton of stuff out in this review. Just like Schindler's List you have to watch this because it is an important piece of film making based on a true story. One word....Brilliant! 10/10

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16 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
There is something for everyone, thanks to Roots, 7 January 2006

Author: Chei Mi Rose from United States

I normally don't start out this way, but I feel it matters. I am a Southern White, and I have not seen this movie up until the other night.

I thought this mini-series was one of the top three or four I have ever seen. Throughout the years since this came out, I never really bothered, thinking it would be simply white bashing. It was not. I felt it might be in contradiction with the kind people and relatives I grew up knowing. It was not.

I feel that this mini-series realistically blends black history in with the history we have been fed from the Northern side as well as the Southern side.

Most southerners were not slave owners. They were represented. I think this movie strove to show the kindness in people, as well as the darkness. I look at the South with fondness, but I know that what this movie portrayed was true - in spirit, if not fact.

Sometime after this originally came out there was some controversy over Haley faking some of this. I thought (at the time), A HA! It's bull! Again, remember that I had not watched it. Upon seeing it I realized that though some of this might be fiction, it certainly rang true.

What I didn't like about the movie: Watching Sandy Duncan and Leslie Uggams play teenagers. The acting was okay. Duncan reminded me of that spoiled brat in Little House on the Prairie. My guess is that Duncan was cast so she would look like an adult child and not seem out of place compared to Uggams. It is perhaps that during the seventies Hollywood did not want to take such a chance on a younger African-American to play Kizzy. It was an important role, and our society had not allowed Blacks to come into their own. Hollywood seems to want to force their views on society, yet they are often the last to come into line.

John Amos, whom I really like, seemed to be good and bad for his role. Someone said he sounded like he was in "Good Times" at some points. I don't feel that way. I do feel that his dialect seemed slightly out of place during some moments. He did not detract from the story, though. He carried on Burton's eternal fight for freedom with the same bullheadedness.

Ben Vereen: What can I say? When he started doing Variety Shows in the Seventies, I really admired him. He could play instruments, as well as sing, dance, and act. He does not disappoint here. I was so sad when he lost his role in Silk Stalkings due to an accident. Thankfully he has recovered over time.

Madge Sinclair: What an actress! and beautiful woman, to boot. I didn't know she had leukemia during the days I watched her on Trapper John. There were some episodes where she seemed older than her years, though always beautiful. In Roots she manages to capture and portray an inner beauty and let it shine through her bondage.

Most of the white actors were well cast, Duncan aside. I didn't realize how busy Lloyd Bridges was doing so many mini-series. He makes you hate him here, so he did his job.

Ed Asner had a very poignant remark about no one really being free. It was that he felt he was becoming a slave to his job. Please do not think I am comparing the miseries of forced slavery to a large scheme of celestial bondage, but it was pointed out in this film, that at the end of the war, freedom simply meant going from slavery into some other forced form of servitude. I'm retired, yet I often feel bound to government restrictions and the things I am forced to do routinely to simply maintain my retirement. The African-Americans added to Asner's moment by later saying that when someone died, the smile on his face meant he was finally free.

When Roots came out I remember the cries of many saying, "We now have our history!" Yes, and it was blended well into all of our histories, as I have mentioned. About five years ago, when my daughter married a man of color, he made her watch Roots. She asked me what I thought of him doing that. My response was that she needed to look at all things objectively, and know that most of life is a shade of gray. I also mentioned that had I been the same city, I would have liked to have viewed it with them. Now I can at least share my thoughts and hear my son-in-law's thoughts as well.

My biggest complaint is that the DVD is already out of print. HUH? One of the greatest mini-series ever made and I have to pay scalpers' fees for a used copy? (I borrowed my copy from the library) Please, someone! put this in a continual printing, and PLEASE, do not do what you did with others (cutting whole sections out to save a buck).

This movie (along with North and South) should be required viewing for all people. For the African-Americans, this movie should be made available forever, so that it does not simply fade into folk and family lore the way that Kunta-Kinte did - with only bits and pieces remaining.

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20 out of 29 people found the following review useful:
Completing the picture, 29 January 2005
Author: Steve West from Adelaide, Australia

I was born in 1980, and had heard of Roots from reading about LeVar Burton being the only real "name" to join Star Trek: The Next Generation. I came across the boxset at my local library and was able to find out what this "Roots" thing was all about. Having the series on DVD was definitely a boon as (despite being in NTSC) it has a crisp and clear appearance, usually stuff on TV from the 70's or 80's has a characteristic fuzziness.

Despite it's lowish budget, and age, Roots has a certain kinetic energy, it kept me interested from the start. Being able to see a young LeVar Burton was great, and without any visors or contact lenses. The casting was excellent all around and the actors put in 100% effort. My only bone to pick was using two different actors for Kunta Kinte. They were physically very different, John Amos doesn't look, act or sound like LeVar Burton, which disrupts the sense of continuity the rest of the multi-episode characters had.

By the end I found I had become quite involved with the series and enjoyed seeing it unfold, I liked it so much I viewed the whole nine hours again with commentary (well, I had time to kill). It is interesting that Roots carries a sense of history (as in the late 70's) and culture with it, it's not just a TV show, there's a whole air surrounding it. I'm glad I got the opportunity to see it, I gained a clearer understanding of where African-Americans as a people are coming from, and I hope everyone who hasn't seen it yet gets the opportunity to do so.

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21 out of 32 people found the following review useful:
I understand it now that I'm older, 5 September 2003
Author: sbrnnxn from usa

In 1977 I was 10 years old, and all I remember is the majority of the city where I live was watching Roots each day for a week. I recently bought the video and watched it with my now 10 year old son, who is Black and I show him the importance of getting an education because our ancestors weren't allowed such luxuries. At his age everything is rosy just like it was when I was 10, but hopefully he can reflect back on this movie to motivate him in the future.

Great cast of characters-even though I didn't realize that O.J. Simpson was in it! John Amos was the best and the funniest especially when he kept losing his character's African accent and sounding more like "James" on Good Times! Overall the movie is very touching and will have you experiencing mixed emotions if you're of the Black race, and have compassion if you're of other races that haven't experienced such things. I highly recommend this film and a book called the Miseducation of the Negro as Black family heirlooms-or for anyone who wants to be enlightened concerning a portion of Black history.

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13 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
The Best TV Miniseries Ever Offered by a Major Commercial Network Before Cable, 16 July 2007

Author: classicalsteve from Oakland, CA

Two of the most important American television programs are "The Civil War" by Ken Burns (1989), and the epic narrative miniseries "Roots" (1977) based on the book "Roots: The Saga of an American Family" by Alex Haley. Despite the controversy surrounding the book, and the facts of Haley's ancestry (for example, the slave Toby aka "Kunte Kinte", may never have fathered Kizzy and therefore may not be a direct ancestor of Haley) the series is an important and ground-breaking work in its stunning portrayal of slave life in America from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century.

For decades, the United States has been largely in denial of its treatment of African-Americans both as slaves and later in post-Civil War periods. The south of the 19th century had fabricated the reality of slave conditions and down-played the brutality inflicted on both slaves and anti-slave sympathizers. Racial hatred and brutality continued into the 20th century, largely fueled by white traditions that have (and continue to) concoct misrepresentations of historical reality to younger generations. By the middle of the 20th century, nearly 100 years after the end of the American Civil War, President Johnson signed Civil Rights legislation into law with the White Southern community kicking and screaming all the way. If legislation couldn't change people's hearts and minds, what could?

Americans love movies, story-telling/narrative film depictions of reality. There had never before been a nationally distributed film production that honestly told the story of the African-American slave experience. Fourteen years after Johnson's legislation, "Roots" was broadcast on national television by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). I regard those network executives that green-lighted the broadcast in great esteem for their willingness to take a chance on this most-important series. I doubt whether US commercial television will ever produce and broadcast such a high-caliber and controversial program again in the near future. And to give credit to the American viewing public, "Roots" was a huge success.

From beginning to end, "Roots" is an absolute triumph of film production, the best-ever miniseries offered by a corporate network. The acting and the script are top-notch. Almost every notable African-American acting talent of the time was solicited to join the cast, from LeVar Burton and John Amos (Kunte Kinte, Toby) to Lou Gosset Jr (Fiddler) to Ben Vareen (Chicken George) to James Earl Jones (Alex Haley). Even OJ Simpson makes an appearance. A lot of notable white talent appears as well, such as Ed Asner and Sandy Duncan.

Slavery is a tragedy and "Roots" is a tragic story. "Roots" has its light moments, its inspiring moments, although it is its heartbreaking moments that stay with you: The moment the young African Kunte Kinte is shackled, sold as chattel and forced to board the slave ship bound for America. The whipping of the young Kunte Kinte to "break" him into slavery. The selling of Kizzy, Toby's daughter, to another slave master because of her involvement with a scheme to help a runaway. These are the moments that make Roots' larger point. Another aspect that makes Roots effective in its rhetoric is that it never seeps into sentimentality to makes its point. The story relies on an honest narrative to tell its story. Is it brutal? Yes. Unjust? Definitely. And that is what it was. (If you don't believe "Roots", sell yourself into slavery and see how you like it.)

Two aspects occur to me about what this story means beyond just the plain inhumanity of the institution of slavery. One aspect is that the benefit of slavery is terribly minute when compared to the staggering price paid by the slaves themselves and everyone else. Simultaneously, non-slaves were pressed into service to maintain slavery as an institution. Such titanic sadness, misery, hopelessness brutality, and inhumanity is forced upon people (both slave and non-slave) in return for a more comfortable life for a minuscule segment of the population. And yet the amount of work, effort, and money to maintain the inhumane infrastructure seems more burdensome than if these people were free. The average white southerner could not afford to own slaves, and many worked for slave owners as overseers, slave-catchers, auctioneers, and other positions designed to maintain the institution. In short, misery for thousands with a little comfort for a few.

The other tragedy is the denial of positive contribution to society. Those who were slaves were denied giving their love, their knowledge, their inspiration, and their culture to society. All this beauty sacrificed so a few white aristocrats can laze around on sofas in front of fireplaces in giant mansions. Someone once said that if we don't help foster the gifts in other people, we run the risk of never seeing how our world could be made better. Slavery is a tragedy for the people enacting it as well, although the suffering aspect is less apparent.

"Roots" is a story that needs to be told and retold. Shown and re-shown. I would encourage any teacher trying to convey the reality of slavery in America to consider showing at least a segment or two of "Roots". There is no question that the film is mesmerizing. It saddens me that there are still those in America that want to hang onto southern myths that propagate that slavery wasn't that bad. These are some of the same people that are convinced the holocaust is a fabrication. It is better to forgive than the forget. We have to embrace our roots.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Mini-Series Mania: Roots, 4 March 2009

Author: Miyagis_Sweaty_wifebeater (sirjosephu@aol.com) from Sacramento, CA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Roots (1977) is still the best mini-series. This highly watched drama set the bar for all of the epic television dramas. The series follows the life of Kunta Kinte and his descendants from the coasts of West Africa to the plantation fields of the American south. This show pulls no punches when dealing with the sad truths about how many slaves were shipped from their homelands and (if they survived the horrific overseas trip) forced to work in the fields. Even though Kunta was a slave, he never lost hope about one day his ancestors would once again have the freedom he once had. He also vowed that his ancestors would never forget their roots, old ways and customs.

Kunta always tried to head for freedom whenever the chance came. Even when the slave catchers cut off a piece of his foot, that never deterred him from running. But his marriage and child kept him from running when he had the opportunity. He named his only daughter Kizzy (Mandinka for staying put). Years later, Kizzy is sold to Tom Moore who uses his slaves not only for workers but for "comfort women: as well. She has a mixed child named Chicken George who like his grandfather also dreams about freedom and does whatever he can to make sure that he's a free man.

Awesome show and it still holds up well, The one thing I really got a hoot out of was seeing some of the well known liberal actors in Hollywood play some of the most despicable characters you'll ever want to see (Ralph Waite, Lloyd Bridges, Vic Morrow). The story and acting is top notched and it's definitely a heart string puller.

Highest recommendation possible.

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9 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Amazing, 25 January 2002

Author: cubiegirl from Springfield, IL

I recently viewed all of this Mini series on the Hallmark Channel, and let me say, it was amazing! I was born 3 years after Roots was on television and never had the chance to see it growing up. I knew that Hallmark was showing it, so I made plans to see all 6 parts this week. It made me angry, it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me happy, it made me open my eyes. The range of emotions ran the table this week. Now I know why it got all the acclaim that it rightly deserves.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
From Gambia to North Carolina, 30 September 2010

Author: Dr Jacques COULARDEAU from Olliergues, France

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This TV mini-series has become a classic in some twenty or thirty years and it deserves to be, both in its first part and in its second part. Yet the quality of the filming and editing has aged and the film is not served by the fact it was done for television that tends to show too many close-ups and to avoid vast rapid movements and wide landscapes. But it has become a classic by the theme it deals with. The first mini series deals with the fate of black people from when they were captured in Africa to their liberation after the Civil War. The vision of Africa in the 18th century is slightly improved on what it was. Some rituals are nicely evoked but not shown, circumcision for example, and nothing is said about excision for the girls. The capturing of Bantu blacks in western Africa and their enslaving had been going on for centuries. The new thing is that the captured Bantu blacks were no longer sold as slaves to the northern Moslem tribes or even Moslem Maghreb people, but to the whites for only one reason: the whites paid better and more. This is not done out of decency. It seems to be done in order to avoid any rejection for the family public, any restrictive rating. It is the same thing with the whole period about slavery. The film concentrates on odious facts but all together rather limited facts: one whipping, a couple of children sold, very few rapes by the whites in order to produce mulattoes that could be sold for a profit. The hardships of field work are also curbed a lot. The living conditions and quarters were quite luxurious when we know what it really was. Even the Civil War is shown with a lot of reserve. They may say the number of dead but they don't show the battles, the medical care of the wounded, the savagery of the war itself and the innumerable amputees and other victims after the war. Altogether the first part is rather tamed. That of course enhances the main theme of this first part, and also of the second part, the fact that one has to retain the memory of one's origins, roots, past, even if it is only a name, a few words, a few episodes. It is those recollections passed from one generation to the next that feed and strengthen the sense of belonging, the hope that will bring the future out of the present, the light that may one day illuminate the dull and dark present. One day at a time but always with the past in the conscious background. And the joy of the liberation is important, but the first part ends on a closure too: the whites are still there and the blacks have to live with them and compromises are not always easy to find and not always to the real benefit of the blacks. Slavery is replaced by sharecropping but what's the difference when the black sharecroppers start with the debts that are attributed to them to pay for what they need to work and they should get free since they worked for nothing for decades. That's how it works with the whites in the South, and yet the family we are speaking of managed to finagle a plan to get the mules free and to move out without paying for the debts of slavery from North Carolina to Tennessee where one freed member who got the chance to make some wealth in England had bought some land. That's the real freedom this family achieves after the Civil war: to possess the land they till and thus the harvest they grow.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

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Among the Finest Mini-series, 13 April 2013

Author: benfield-larry09 from Charlotte NC

One of the best mini-series to grace the small screen. Told through span of several generations of writer Authur Haley's ancestors. The depiction of the slave era is at times hard to watch but should be seen by all. The stellar cast brings both young (at that time) talent and many veteran stars of both the big and small screen. Both Levar Burton, and John Amos bring to life the story of Mandinka tribesman Kunta Kinte who is taken into chains from his African homeland to Colonial America and sold into slavery.

This series does not hold back either the depiction of native African life nor the language and violence of slave life in America. If you have a younger audience you might want to talk some about the content but nothing is presented in the series that is not done to the highest standard and quality.

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Miniseries needs to be seen past, present, and future!, 19 March 2013

Author: ShelbyTMItchell from Seymour Tennessee

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

As we are still striving to make sense and harmony of racial relations. As this miniseries from the 1977 TV season that drew over 100M people and how it introduced the world to how racism really began about.

It shows the struggle to be free and how it looks at the descendants of the late Alex Haley, author the book thinking that the word "free" would never, ever come.

By showing the struggles that these people have. From Kunta Kinte the main protagonist to his line of family linage like Kizzy, Chicken George, etc.

A great cast led by a then unknown Levar Burton and great writing. Shows us that this miniseries needs to be seen not just in the past, but present and future generations to come.

No matter what race, color, creed, gender, religion, etc we belong in. For it is the fight to accept others like in the past that has since occurred in the present and in the future to come.

Haley should take a bow for opening up 100M to the fight to remain free and accept others!

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