The final act is abysmal even for Spike (not counting the coda or Harry Belafonte lynching scene).

The comeuppance for the racist cop was just....I'm speechless.

The bombing sequence was fucking amateur hour.

How this got awarded Best Adapted Screenplay I'll never understand.

The movie fails to even make the whole thing make sense. At no point do we understand why, after the initial contact by Stallworth, he's allowed to continue via phone while Zimmerman is the in person contact. The scene with him trying to teach Zimmerman how to speak like him using 'Soul Power' fails because it addresses the issue head-on only to not resolve it in any way. He still doesn't sound like him or even attempt to.

Also, everything with the Black Student Union president was just embarrassing. Never did we get a sense that their relationship was real or romantic. They spend most of the film just talking at each other. Usually it takes a white person to fail in a depiction of black love/relationship to this degree. That walk and talk with them talking about Blaxploitation and the scene where he reveals he's a cop were some of Spike's worst instincts on display.

Sure there is some good stuff stuff here (his indictment of white women was fierce, the transformation/legitimization of orgs like the Klan, the Belafonte lynching story, Driver and Washington's chemistry) and there's some great acting and it's funny. But this is nowhere near Spike's best work. Mid-tier at best.

I get why white people would fawn over it though. It resolves them of responsibility the whites in the film are so cartoonish and boorish that they are immediately buffered from them. Plus, they get to not only that they saw the film but, 'Oh my God, it was sooooooo good'. The problem is, it isn't. It's not particularly well made so why then are you telling me it's so good? Don't worry, I already know why. That was rhetorical.

You know what, I may have just written my way into hating this movie.