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Duck Season

EMAILPRINTWarner Independent Pictures

Duck Season reviews
74
8.4 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 27 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 16 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Comedy  |  Foreign

Written by: Fernando Eimbcke
Paula Markovitch

Directed by: Fernando Eimbcke

Release Date:
Theatrical: March 10, 2006
DVD: August 29, 2006

Running Time: 90 minutes, B/W

Origin: Mexico

Language(s): Spanish (with English subtitles)

Summary

RATING: R for language and some drug content

Starring Enrique Arreola, Diego Cataño, Daniel Miranda, Danny Perea, Carolina Politi, Antonio Zúñiga, Alfredo Escobar, and Sara Castro

An unlikely foursome stumble upon little revelations and insights into the kind of youthful longing that stays with one well past adolescence. (Warner Independent Pictures)

What The Critics Said

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...

100

Boston Globe Ty Burr

It's one of the small, pitch-perfect treasures of the movie year.

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100

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A quiet, loopy gem, Duck Season is a goofball celebration of old friends, new beginnings, adolescent freedom, and baked goods laced with a little something extra.

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100

Baltimore Sun John Anderson

Almost everything that happens - and almost everything happens within Flama's apartment - is food for dry humor and very recognizable humanity.

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91

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Duck Season unfolds with a slaphappy logic that only looks casual. In fact, every unfinished conversation and banal picture on the wall (one's of ducks) matters as four little people share one memorable little day.

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90

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Inside this small canvas - almost the entire film unfolds in the one apartment - Mr. Eimbcke turns each character into an epic.

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88

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

A highly satisfying miniature. Its subject may be adolescence, and some of its pot-smoking, kick-back humor is adolescent too--in a good way. But the film's calm and witty visual rhythm offers a rueful awareness of time passing and of time wasted, in ways that people tend not to appreciate fully until long after they've wasted it.

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83

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Mexican writer-director Fernando Eimbcke got his start in short films and documentaries, and his first feature reveals a gift for concision: It doesn't overexert itself trying to come to big conclusions about these characters, and even the comedic scenes settle for gentle quirks over broad guffaws.

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80

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Director Fernando Eimbcke, in an extraordinary debut, never expresses contempt for his characters. By examining their inner lives with compassion and respect, he inspires us to do the same.

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80

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Sometimes a film about nothing can be a film about everything; a film without overwhelmingly dramatic events can delight you more than an outsized epic. The sly and disarming Duck Season is such a film.

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80

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

The lovely, unpredictable comedy Duck Season marks the arrival of a fresh talent in writer-director Fernando Eimbcke. His script is vibrant with unforced humanist observations, the performances are natural and endearing.

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75

TV Guide Ken Fox

Slow but charming film.

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75

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

It's about the kind of kids who could never sit still enough, unfortunately, for a movie that perfectly captures the frustrations, longings, obsessions and torments of the awkward years before manhood.

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75

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A hilariously deadpan black-and-white slacker comedy, Duck Season is sort of like "Wayne's World" directed by a Mexican Jim Jarmusch.

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75

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Not very much really happens in Duck Season, but in its rich details, it remembers how absorbing and endless every single day can seem when you're 14.

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75

San Francisco Chronicle Neva Chonin

The beauty of Duck Season is its insistence that profound human experiences can arrive slowly, in incremental packages, scattered over the course of an average Sunday.

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75

Premiere Ethan Alter

Some viewers will wonder what exactly it is they are supposed to be laughing at, but those that do find themselves on the movie's wavelength will enjoy its observational approach to comedy.

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75

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The Mexican writer-director Fernando Eimbcke attempts to give this story a melancholy overlay, but its main interest is in its confirmation that teenagers are pretty much the same everywhere.

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75

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Warm, winning and clever.

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75

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The spirits of Jim Jarmusch and Kevin Smith hover over this breezy slacker comedy set on a comatose Sunday afternoon.

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70

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Duck Season is something quite different, capable of gratifying film snobs and regular viewers alike.

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70

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Duck Season is not (yet) the work of a great filmmaker, but it's the kind of movie in which a fledgling director traps his talent in a bottle and saves it for next time.

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70

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The fullness of Duck Season is in direct proportion to its smallness; its modesty makes it bloom.

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70

Variety David Rooney

This slight but appealing film's funky eccentricity feels a little contrived at times.

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67

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Not in recent memory has a movie so short – 90 minutes on the nose – been so stagnant and stubbornly slow to build. And that's exactly the point.

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60

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The characters' behavior isn't always believable, and the jerky rhythm takes some getting used to (there may be more attitude here than observation). But the defiant absence of any conventional plot has a cumulative charm.

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50

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Shot in silvery black-and-white, Duck Season is not charmless, just insubstantial.

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40

Film Threat Phil Hall

Sometimes Duck Season is amusing. More often, though, it is boring and icky.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 16 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Ken G. gave it a4:
Ultimately I didn't care about the characters. Barely amusing. Not worth the time it takes to watch it.

Rcardo R. gave it a10:
A MASTERPIECE the best film in Spanish since Y Tu Mama Tambien & Amores Perros. Just saw it, and I was really amazed, the screenplay is great, the performances magistral.... FERNANDO EIMBCKE: let's remember his name oh! best film so far along with Little miss Sunshine & United 93

[Anonymous] gave it a5:
The ultimate in minimalism.

Ken G. gave it a4:
Watching people in a movie just hanging around being bored, is well, kind of boring. I've seen the comparsions to "Steinfeld" some have made, but "Steinfeld" didn't work because it was "about nothing". "Steinfeld" worked because it was a very funny show that happened to be "about nothing". On the other hand "Duck season" is a dull and kind of drab movie "about nothing". I also never really believed the 30- something year old pizza delivery guy would spend the whole day palling around with 14-year olds kids, escepially when he had a job to get back to. I understand that the point was that in his heart he didn't mind getting fired, but I just didn't think movie handled this aspect in a believeable way.

Michael gave it a10:
It's an excellent little movie: it manages to be profound while picturing everyday life. It's worth seeing at least once. (And Phil Hall, from Film Threat, who called it "boring" and "icky" should not write movie reviews).

Tom B. gave it a10:
Fantastic from beginning to end! One of the things I loved about it was the clever use of sound as a metronome for the flow of the picture. Brilliant! And not a bad bunch of acting either.

Juan gave it a10:
one of the few films that truly captures the essence of youth. funny and touching, yet another great example of the renaissance that mexican cinema is experiencing.

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