Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

inspectors71 If you can get passed the general nastiness of Ossie Davis' Cotton Comes to Harlem, the reverse stereotyping--making white characters functioning morons and black characters vicious, cunning, and foolish-- there's not a bad little story here. Raymond St. Jacques and Godfrey Cambridge are appealing New York detectives--street cool and underlying moralists--who are on the trail of a smarmy community organizer--er--street preacher who is ripping off his own congregation, laying further waste to Harlem's poor, and doing it all with a fine vocabulary and wardrobe and a wife who has beautiful arms.Wait a second. I'm getting my con men mixed up here.CCTH is as incoherent and as blacksploitation as you would expect, but the fun and humor and cinematography and Judy Pace are all so lush that long after you've given up on trying to make hide nor hair out of the incomprehensibilities, you're still in it to finish it.The movie can't decide if it wants to be relevant or a piece of spoofery. If you don't mind or care, sit back and enjoy the ride.

bensonmum2 Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are two black cops working out of a Harlem precinct. They've got their eyes on a minister promising his poor parishioners the opportunity to travel to Africa for $100. Jones and Johnson see Rev. Deke O'Malley for the scammer he really is. But things get complicated when, during a recruitment rally, the $87,000 the good Reverend has collected is stolen by armed bandits. The only clue about the money's whereabouts is that it's been hidden in a bale of cotton. Hot on the trail of the cotton bale are the mob, the police, Reverend O'Malley, a junk dealer, a militant black group, and just about everyone else in Harlem.The first true blaxploitation movie (there seems to be some disagreement, but I'm not sure how you could go with Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song as it was released a year later), Cotton Comes to Harlem is wonderfully entertaining from start to finish. It's a non-stop comedic slice of life in Harlem in the early 1970s. The movie is filled with eclectic characters, unique set-pieces, interesting music choices, and real life locations you just can't replicate on a sound-stage. The plot has so much going on that it never gets old. Ossie Davis didn't direct many films, but he does an amazing job with this, his first, effort. It's a more professional looking product than many of the blaxploitation films that would come later. The acting is a highlight and is as good as I've ever seen in a movie of this type. Godfrey Cambridge gives a memorable performance as policeman Gravedigger Jones. Cambridge manages to be the standout in a strong cast. His partner, Raymond St. Jacques as Coffin Ed Johnson, is rock solid. The pair are joined by Calvin Lockhart, the stunning Judy Pace, Redd Foxx, and a slew of familiar faces. The comedy in Cotton Comes to Harlem has held up surprisingly well. Some of it might be considered un-PC in today's overly sensitive world, but I still found myself laughing along with many scenes. Overall, it's a well made movie that I fell no hesitation in rating an 8/10.

bkoganbing One of the better black exploitation pictures to come out of the Seventies was Cotton Comes To Harlem where Raymond St. Jacques and Godfrey Cambridge gave a black twist to the male buddy film that so many white actors had done over the years going all the way back to James Cagney and Pat O'Brien.St. Jacques and Cambridge play a pair of police detectives assigned to a precinct north of Central Park where they've drawn duty being security for a rally headed by the Reverend Calvin Lockhart who's got a nascent Back to Africa movement going. He's collecting money at his rally and preaching up a storm when some masked bandits armed with automatic weapons take off with the proceeds. The money gets hidden in a bale of cotton and then the bale gets ripped off.Our two detectives got a whole host of suspects, some white numbers gangsters from Pleasant Avenue, black militants, the good reverend himself who St. Jacques has a passionate dislike for and various and assorted other criminal types. Lockhart is one charismatic preacher and as he says himself, he could be another Marcus Garvey who immediately came to mind before Lockhart mentioned his name during the film.John Anderson and Eugene Roche are St. Jacques and Cambridge's superiors in the police department, Anderson impatient with them and Roche inclined to give them plenty of room to maneuver. Judy Pace plays Lockhart's mistress and one seductive temptress if there ever was one. And we can't forget Redd Foxx in a delightful performance as an old rummy whose ship might just be coming in.Cotton Comes To Harlem moves at a very fast pace with absolutely not a wasted frame of film. It holds up very well after almost 40 years even if those fashions and those Afros don't.

Rhoelxiel I agree with those that say this was an entertaining movie. Of the blaxploitation films, this was the more classier. Fine acting from Cambridge, Lockhart, and others. Ossie Davis direction very good.