A Thousand and One is a showcase for Teyana Taylor, but its uneven story of scrappy motherhood strays from its strengths too often. JacobOller's review:
Showcasing a jagged character’s friction-laden life through the city and nation that sharpened her edges,’s series of time-hopping vignettes sits atop a suspenseless time bomb. Inez is fresh out of Rikers for a bit of harmless “boosting,” looking to get back into the hairdressing business and back to mothering six-year-old Terry –even if that means boosting him from his foster family.
For every scene of honest, quiet heartbreak, one of melodrama ignores characterization and performance to spice up the plot. For every nuanced bedroom conversation between Inez and her boyfriend Lucky , where the implications of silence are as intimate and lingering as the film’s rumpled images of love, a gaudy speech montage from Rudy Giuliani or Michael Bloomberg bops us on the nose with the city’s political parallels.
But when the film jumps along its timeline—to 2001, removed from what most people think of when anything’s set in 2001 New York, where Terry’s got the chance to attend a selective high school; then to 2005, where Terry’s on the cusp of college—it relies on the broad strokes. What begins as an unapologetic portrait of survival, centered on Taylor’s winningly edgy performance, blurs its focus as its narrative lens shifts to the next generation.
’s volatile center. Combined with Catlett—who makes the most of a lightly sketched father figure, able to softly project the complexity-quashing love he shows Terry—the older performers embody the family’s imperfect success, one that Rockwell insists can only defy the odds of America for so long.
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