Mo' Better Blues

Mo' Better Blues summary of box office results, charts and release information and related links.

Spike Lee's "Mo' Better Blues" is about a jazzman, but it's not really about jazz -- it's about work, about being so wrapped up in your career that you don't have space for relationships and you can't see where you're headed. It's a less passionate and angry film than Lee's previous work, "Do the Right Thing," and less inspired, too. It's his fourth feature but suffers a little from the "second-novel syndrome," the pressure on an artist to follow up a great triumph. But it's a logical film to come at this point in Lee's career, since it's about the time and career pressures on a young artist.

At least a half-dozen movies are struggling to get out of the ambitious but maddening hodgepodge that is writer-producer-director Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues. At the center is a romantic triangle: Bleek Gilliam, the Brooklyn-born jazz trumpeter played by Denzel Washington, is juggling two women â?? Indigo Downes, a dedicated schoolteacher played by Joie Lee (Spike's sister), and Clarke Bentancourt, an aspiring singer and sexual bombshell played by newcomer Cynda Williams. The women don't like being treated interchangeably, especially when Bleek buys them the same red dress and mixes up their names in bed. "With men, it's a dick thing," Bleek says feebly. But Indigo and Clarke know it's more than that: It's a music thing. Bleek's heart belongs to his trumpet.

Twenty-five years ago, Spike Lee's star-studded film about love and jazz hit theaters.

75% Audience Score

Story about a jazz musician who must make choices between his music and his romantic life.

Clip from the movie.

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A Spike Lee joint.

Directed by Spike Lee. With Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Wesley Snipes, Giancarlo Esposito. Jazz trumpeter Bleek Gilliam makes questionable decisions in his professional and romantic lives.

Mo' Better Blues (1990) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.

LEAD: SPIKE LEE is an exhilarating mix of brilliance and bravado, of artist, businessman and preacher. In his stylized visions of our racially tense society - the small-scale sexual comedy ''She's Gotta Have It,'' the inventive musical ''School Daze'' and the astounding political and moral drama ''Do the Right Thing'' - he dares viewers and the Hollywood establishent to keep up with his honesty and humor, his passion and visual flair.

Mo' Better Blues is a 1990 musical drama film starring Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, and Spike Lee, who also directed. It follows a period in the life of fictional jazz trumpeter Bleek Gilliam (played by Washington) as a series of bad decisions result in his jeopardizing both his relationships and his playing career. The film focuses on themes of friendship, loyalty, honesty, cause-and-effect, and ultimately salvation. It features the music of the Branford Marsalis quartet and Terence Blanchard on trumpet. The film was released five months after the death of Robin Harris and is dedicated to his memory.