Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Bartleby
Outrider Pictures


9.0

based on 19 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 1 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some sexual content

Starring David Paymer, Crispin Glover, Glenne Headly, Joe Piscopo, Maury Chaykin, Seymour Cassel, Carrie Snodgress, and Dick Martin

A modern adaptation of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener."

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Jonathan Parker Catherine DiNapoli Herman Melville (story Bartleby the Scrivener)
DIRECTED BY:	Jonathan Parker
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: July 8, 2003 Video: July 8, 2003 Theatrical: May 24, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	82 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Mr. Parker has brilliantly updated his source and grasped its essence, composing a sorrowful and hilarious tone poem about alienated labor, or an absurdist workplace sitcom, as if a team of French surrealists had been put in charge of "The Drew Carey Show."

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

While Parker and co-writer Catherine di Napoli are faithful to Melville’s plotline, they and a fully engaged supporting cast — have made the old boy's characters more quick-witted than any English Lit major would have thought possible.

Slate David Edelstein

The neat thing about Jonathan Parker's modern-day Bartleby (Outsider Pictures) is that it brings out all the vaudeville undercurrents in Melville's dark tale and turns it into a surreal tragi-sitcom for our own era.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

This is a shrewd and effective film from a director who understands how to create and sustain a mood.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The film has been directed by Jonathan Parker; he adapted the Melville story with Catherine DiNapoli. It's his first work, and a promising one. I admire it and yet cannot recommend it, because it overstays its natural running time.

Miami Herald Charles Savage

Though this film can be clumsy, its ambitions are equally -- and admirably -- uncommercial.

Variety Joe Leydon

Although closer in tone to "Office Space" than Herman Melville, Jonathan Parker's absurdist update of Bartleby is surprisingly faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of the "Moby-Dick" author's 1853 novella about an under-achieving Wall Street copy clerk.

TV Guide Ken Fox

It's a testament to both the timelessness and the prescience of Herman Melville's 1853 story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" that it can be so easily updated with so few changes.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

It's a parable as timely today as when it was written. But except for Paymer as the boss who ultimately expresses empathy for Bartleby's pain, the performances are so stylized as to be drained of human emotion.

New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson

A key problem here is that the film is adapting a short story, and, as such, has to pad it out to feature length -- it still comes in at a scant 82 minutes, about 52 minutes too long.

Empire Nick Dawson

A fable that leaves us unenlightened at the end, it is a curious, worthy failure.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

It's not a bad idea, and it has the right cast and the right look. But, sad to say, it lacks the pace and energy to make it come alive and therefore remains more of a literary conceit than a movie.

Film Threat Ron Wells

Oh, boy. This is not unlike watching one of the movies Jerry Lewis made after that concentration camp/clown epic nearly destroyed his career and his mind.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Comes across as stiff and uneven.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Does little more than re-create the oppressive feeling of suffocating employment. And why put yourself through that experience without the promise of a paycheck at the other end?

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Parker's film is flat beyond the flatness appropriate to the story; the conflict between Glover and Paymer follows Melville's original so squarely that it quickly begins to feel like they're going through the motions.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's no insult to Melville to say that he wrote, in effect, the original ''Dilbert.'' This movie, unfortunately, makes ''Dilbert'' look like Melville.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

There's obviously some philosophical comment on the alienating effects of ho-hum toil buried somewhere in this weird mess, which features an irritating, theremin-heavy score. But can you be bothered stifling a yawn and searching for meaning? I would prefer not to.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

The loud, musty production design -- steeped in lime greens and tangerine oranges -- smells of recirculated air and enervated ambition, but unfortunately, so does the movie itself.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Rachel J. gave it a 9:
Tons of wacky and absurd fun that is sure to incite a cult audience to make a stage play or some other form of worship very soon.

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page

Bartleby Outrider Pictures

Bartleby
Outrider Pictures