Am I Black Enough For You?

This Swedish documentary about soul singer Billy Paul, who briefly rose to fame with the smoochy song Me and Mrs Jones, but then alienated his white audience with his political follow-up hit, Am I Black Enough for You.

Nigel Andrews, Financial Times: Am I Black Enough for You is a brain-curdling essay in docu-sycophancy. (Verdict: one star out of five)

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: A jazz-inflected stylist rather than a gospel shouter, Paul is still in good voice, though between nimbly shot concert highlights there's a fair degree of archive footage, sometimes heavy-handed in inscribing the context for the artist's social-conscience-raising '70s tracks which have since found him a new audience among the rap cognoscenti. Slightly woolly overall. (Verdict: three stars out of five)

Wendy Ide, the Times: Paul... clearly harbours a grudge against the producer/songwriter Kenny Gamble, whom he blames for the choice of follow-up song and subsequent career stasis. Gamble in turn waffles on about what a remarkable talent Billy Paul was and neatly avoids addressing the question of whether or not he single-handedly sank the man's career. It all boils down to a complete lack of focus on the part of the film-makers. Not only do they fail to get their questions answered, they also run out of material so disastrously that they resort to cutting together a murky montage of Paul and his wife sleeping on a plane to accompany one of his songs. (Verdict: two stars out of five)