Metacritic reviews

Remarkable. [22 July 1991]

Singleton's powerhouse movie has the impact of a stun gun. [15 July 1991]

In a watershed year for black filmmakers, Singleton has made the punchiest feature debut in recent memory. Those who complain that Lee's characters tangle up his plots will savor Singleton's flawlessly crafted edges. [12 July 1991]

If people here feel trapped, despairing of a way out, it is Singleton's gift to make us empathize with their hopelessness, and make us wonder, along with them, how long this must go on.

Ultra socially responsible, sometimes to the point of playing like a laundry list of difficulties faced specifically by the urban black community.

Positive figures--Furious, Tre, Brandi--are rendered perhaps too virtuous, and Singleton becomes a bit preachy in the closing scenes, but an overt "message" movie may be the only appropriate response to the ongoing social crisis addressed.

It will often tear at the heart too -- at least, when it doesn't feel like the rap equivalent of a classroom lecture.

Singleton shows some genuine talent in handling character and action, and equal amounts of confusion and attitude when it comes to matters of gender and ghetto politics.

Boys N the Hood wants to be “The Learning Tree'' and “Super Fly'' at once, an ambition that doesn't seem quite honest. [12 July 1991]

Formally, Boyz is just one more old-time bad-neighborhood picture. Instead of, say, Manhattan's Lower East Side in Prohibition days, it's an LA lower-middle-class black neighborhood afflicted with drugs. And Singleton's control of his picture's flow is much less firm than was the other directors'. [2 Sept 1991]