not horrible nor great

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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.

With all that has been discovered and written about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, it's unfortunate that the movie did not stick to facts. The acting was good. 1. It's unclear whether there was a first son Tom who survived. Thomas Woodson was shown through DNA testing NOT to be related to the male Jefferson line. 2. While the movie had to come up with material for times when Jefferson was away, the circumstances of Sally Hemings' status at Monticello make it unlikely that she was attacked and whipped in the way shown. 3. The slaves at Monticello were NOT sold until after Jefferson's death, when they were auctioned off and Monticello was sold. Jefferson had allowed Beverly and Harriet to "run away" years before that, when Harriet was 21. 4. He freed Eston and Madison Hemings in his will. They shared a house in Charlottesville. Martha gave Sally Hemings "her time" (an indirect kind of freedom) and she lived in Charlottesville with her free sons until her death. Thus, all of the Hemings nuclear family were freed - something that points to the special relationship they had with Jefferson. 5. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which runs Monticello, and the National Genealogical Society have both stated that the preponderance of historic evidence (supported by the DNA results) is that Jefferson fathered all of Sally Hemings' children, as noted above. Descendants of Eston Hemings were found to be related to the Jefferson male line, and Thomas Jefferson was the most likely candidate as the father of him and the other children. Four Hemings children survived to adulthood, and three of those: Beverly, Harriet and Eston and his descendants, passed into white society. They were 7/8 white by heritage. 6. The Carr nephews were shown by DNA testing NOT to be possible ancestors to the Hemings children. 7. As others have recommended, read Annette Gordon-Reed's book "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy". It's a good analysis of the evidence and how historians tried to avoid the obvious for years.

I was recently doing research on interracial relationships for my history class. I came across this movie, boy am I glad. Although I am happy the writer of the movie was black, I felt some other issues could've been addressed. As far as Thomas Jefferson having children with Sally Hemings is not far from my mind, seeing he would've been like almost every other slave owner in those days. The relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is shown as a loving one in this movie. Which I have always felt was very far from the truth, there's no evidence that this relationship was anything more than another slave/master relationship. I did wish that they would've shown one of her children being black, considering 2 or 3 of her children could actually pass for white. Besides those things the movie was great, I loved Sam Neil as Thomas Jefferson, he really out did himself in this movie.

I really liked this movie. I like when skeletons are brought out of the closet. I do think the movie tried to squeeze too much into a small amount of time, but it did it's best. I would've liked to see more on Sally's relationship with her children instead of these sides references to them when they grew up. I mean, that's what all the hoopla was about wasn't it? The fact that the kids are Jeffersons? I'm sure these kids had some issues with dark-skinned slaves and wanted to know why they were slaves when they were pretty much as white as the owners. I think issues like that could've and should've been addressed more.Carmen Ejogo blew me away as Sally. She's simply stunning on screen. I appreciated the fact that she studied the accents of the South during that time. It wasn't full-fledged southern twang, but a mix of various tones, since the country was still in its early inception stages. I appreciated Mare's portrayal of Jefferson's daughter who's obsessed with protecting his legacy, even when he doesn't seem too preoccupied with it. It sounds very much like his white descendants today. They aren't able to fully grasp that this man was human. The reigning social habit of the day was to take black concubines who were their slaves. It's horrible to us, but it was natural to them.It's a little unsettling that the relationship is played so much as this Harlequinn romance novel when many similar situations were hardly that. Rape was common in these types of relationships, whether by brute force or seduction. I'm loathe to think that Sally, being only 15 or so at the time she started her relationship with Jefferon, was simply going to lie down like that and understand a loving, committed relationship. On the other hand, she was aware of her family's history of women becoming their master's concubines. Maybe she understood life at that age a lot better than most of us in our age of modernity can understand now. Their relationship touches on many levels, and the movie left you wondering. It was a nice touch, because we don't know what happened at all.I'm big on black people getting what's theirs, and I think this story is a great example of people having a right to something. You may not like the relationship, but it happened and they're here, so give them what's theirs. America's habit of utterly dismissing the claims of blacks because we have oral histories instead of written ones, just irks me to no end. (Like someone can't write a lie) The slaves knew what was going on, so they aren't in the habit of lying about it. That kind of thing was usually done by the masters and their families to cover up their fascination with power. The movie was a little light considering the severity of the place and time, but it was still a good film. The scene where Sally's baby dies and her niece, Martha, simply dismisses her with a curt "I'm sorry" was wonderfully done. The woman had given birth to the president's child and lost it. If it was Jefferson's late wife, it would've been something completely different. And the child would've been buried in the family cemetery to boot. That's the legacy of slavery. I'm sure there were historical inaccuracies, but one comes to expect this with Hollywood portrayals.

I wish I had run across this unheralded made-for-TV film several months ago, while I was writing a graduate-level paper on the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings controversy. Director Charles Haid's production brings this age-old debate to life in a moving and – I believe-historically accurate manner.Although the writing credits do not mention Barbara Chase-Riboud's 1979 novel, `Sally Hemings,' this work of inspired historic fiction seems to be the primary inspiration for Tina Andrews' screenplay. The novel, likewise, was built upon the 1974 landmark book by Fawn McKay Brodie, `Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait.' Savagely attacked by the academic elite at the time, Brodie's work was supported by Annette Gordon-Reed's `Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy' in 1996 and by DNA testing two years later. Some still refuse to believe. For the open-minded, though, Brodie and Gordon-Reed's books (which I highly recommend) painted a clear portrait, even if it may have been blurred a bit around the edges. The DNA evidence merely cemented their scholarship.Andrews and Haid, like Chase-Riboud, Brodie and Gordon-Reed, take an even-handed, fair look at events as they may well have happened. Naturally, like Chase-Riboud's novel, this is historic fiction. Large chunks of private lives are recreated on the sparsest bits of evidence and speculation. The story, however, stands up to scrutiny as a fictitious narrative. Did Jefferson and Hemings exchange years of romantic letters, which were later destroyed? We will never know. Did Jefferson's long-term relationship with Hemings, which by its very length would seem to dispel the arguments that it was either an ongoing rape or purely a sexual relationship, affect his ideas on slavery and emancipation? We will probably never know. Does this movie paint a portrait of two very real human beings, acting and reacting as they may very well have done 200 years ago? I believe it very much does so.This is probably not the place for an in-depth analysis of the arguments for and against the Hemings' family claims. Personally, I found in my own research that the relationship between the two seems very likely to have been real and to have been a true love story -albeit a tragic one. If one accepts the basic tenets – that Jefferson and the teenage slave became physically and emotionally involved in Paris and that they continued a somewhat secret love affair for nearly 40 years, which bore several mulatto children, then the story of Jefferson and his slaves is a particularly complex and poignant one. A true Enlightenment man, Jefferson was certainly keenly aware of the disparity between his words `all men are created equal' and other such epitaphs and his ownership of more than 100 African-American slaves.As in the Chase-Riboud novel, Jefferson is seen as a good man, but far from perfect. Sam Neill, although his physical resemblance to the third president is slight, captures the complexity and ambiguity of this brilliant, yet tortured individual. In his heart he knows slavery is wrong, but can never bring himself to abandon his rising political star by taking such a politically suicidal stance. Later, after his wealth and influence have crumbled, he is wracked by regret for not having used his earlier power to fight slavery. At least this is Haid's take and I think it is a perfectly supportable one. Carmen Ejogo, meanwhile, is lovely and convincing as the mysterious Sally Hemings. Unlike Chase-Riboud's character, Ejogo's Sally is not sophisticated beyond all likelihood for her time and place. She could read and write French and English and obtained many of the social skills of a genteel country lady; yet she was probably not the cerebral debutant of the novel.The rest of the cast is strong, including legendary black actress Diahann Carroll as the family matriarch, Betty Hemings, and Mare Winningham as Martha Jefferson Raldolph. While Andrews and Haid may occasionally slip into presentism and have Sally and others mouth very 2000-sounding lectures on black pride, etc., they generally avoid such temptations. The movie transports the viewer into Jefferson and Hemings' world – and into their lives as they very well may have been lived.