CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

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

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

xx All of Us
53 Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
57 Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
63 Appaloosa
68 Ashes of Time Redux
68 August Evening
62 Baghead
81 Ballast
55 Battle in Seattle
xx Beer for My Horses
xx Billy: The Early Years
63 Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56 Bottle Shock
50 Breakfast with Scot
61 Brick Lane
xx Call and Response
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
47 Choke
43 Choose Connor
41 Cthulhu
62 Duchess, The
85 Edge of Heaven, The
66 Elegy
80 Encounters at the End of the World
26 Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64 Fall, The
28 Fireproof
65 Flow: For Love of Water
37 Forever Strong
82 Frozen River
73 Girl Cut in Two, A
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
51 Good Dick
82 Happy-Go-Lucky
44 Henry Poole is Here
31 Hounddog
53 Humboldt County
72 I Served the King of England
71 I.O.U.S. A
40 Igor
64 In Search of a Midnight Kiss
xx Just Buried
62 Kabluey
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
78 Last Mistress, The
xx Lower Learning
63 Man Named Pearl, A
89 Man on Wire
62 Mister Foe
86 Momma's Man
80 Moving Midway
53 Nights and Weekends
73 Obscene
xx Phoebe in Wonderland
55 Ping Pong Playa
76 Pool, The
82 Rachel Getting Married
55 Religulous
57 RocknRolla
55 Save Me
72 Secret, A
45 Shoot on Sight
57 Sixty Six
82 Tell No One
63 Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
57 Towelhead
72 Transsiberian
83 Trouble the Water
83 U2 3D
84 Up the Yangtze
52 Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
79 Visitor, The
xx W.
61 Wackness, The
xx Whaledreamers
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Mister Lonely
IFC Films

Mister Lonely reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 53 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
4.4 out of 10
based on 22 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 5 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, Denis Lavant, James Fox, Melita Morgan, and Anita Pallenberg

Only Harmony Korine could weave Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, her daughter Shirley Temple, and flying nuns into a hypnotically funny and truly poignant tale of the instability behind fanaticism and the redemption we can hope to find in one another. The film follows a lonely Michael Jackson impersonator who is invited by a beautiful Marilyn Monroe to a commune in the Scottish Highlands full of other impersonators, including the Queen of England, Madonna, Sammy Davis Jr., and James Dean. In a parallel storyline, the incomparable Werner Herzog plays a Latin American priest who learns his missionary of nuns can literally fly. (IFC Films)


GENRE(S): Comedy  |  Drama  
WRITTEN BY: Harmony Korine
Avi Korine
 
DIRECTED BY: Harmony Korine  
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: May 2, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: UK / France / Ireland / USA 

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
Film Threat Don R. Lewis
The film is damn near a masterpiece. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait so long to see what Korine will do next.
Read Full Review
91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Travis Nichols
Korine's latest film, Mister Lonely, is no different, but this film has a sweetness that has rarely, if ever, been present in his previous work.
Read Full Review
75
Premiere Glenn Kenny
What to make of it all? Hard to say. Just to take in the fact that its soundtrack is made up of music by both J. Spaceman and Sun City Girls is to understand that this is a picture that's divided against itself in a way that's perhaps too hermetic to be comprehended.
Read Full Review
75
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Korine is finding his way toward artistic greatness by searching his soul. It's possible that the man in the mirror is him.
Read Full Review
70
The New York Times A.O. Scott
Mister Lonely, self-enclosed though it may be, nonetheless demonstrates that Mr. Korine, who showed his ability to shock and repel in earlier films, also has the power to touch, to unsettle and to charm. This is undoubtedly a small movie, but it's also more than that: it's a small, imperfect world.
Read Full Review
70
Washington Post Desson Thomson
What engages us is Korine's revolutionary way of telling stories. It's as though he's downloading his dreams directly onto the screen.
Read Full Review
67
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
This film may be Korine's most accessible as a director, featuring characters, images, and situations that are stirring and unforgettable – even if they don't add up to a complete narrative or visual whole.
Read Full Review
63
Chicago Tribune Tasha Robinson
Like so many lovely cinematic dreams, Mister Lonely inevitably descends into nightmare, with an unsettlingly grim conclusion that, again, seems more imagistic than idea-driven.
Read Full Review
60
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Not all of the movie works - in fact, huge portions don't - but there are enough striking moments to make a lasting impact. How ironic: In this fairy-tale of arrested development, Korine has created his most mature movie yet.
Read Full Review
60
Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
While it's full of arresting, indelible images, Mr. Lonely remains mostly on the level of abstraction. You get it but you don't always feel it.
Read Full Review
60
Variety Scott Foundas
Less outre than "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy," Korine's most lavishly produced pic to date begins as a sweet-tempered tale of social misfits-turned-celebrity impersonators, but falls short of its ambition to say something meaningful about the obsessive nature of celebrity culture.
Read Full Review
50
New York Magazine David Edelstein
I'm glad Korine has pulled himself together, but the film is pretty ramshackle, full of obvious group improvisations that fail to spark and an overdose of bathos.
Read Full Review
50
Village Voice Jim Ridley
Co-written with his brother Avi, Mister Lonely is startlingly straightforward compared to his earlier work. But, like that work, it stands or falls on each single, self-contained scene.
Read Full Review
50
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Decidedly loopy and nonlinear, Mister Lonely is precious and artsy, but there are moments when Korine's, er, unique vision brings something bold and beautiful to the table.
Read Full Review
50
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
As a work of entertainment, as a cohesive narrative and as an artistic whole, there's no way to call it anything but an on-balance average effort. Yet there's nothing remotely average about the movie's warm spirit, its imaginative and arresting cinematography or its handful of unique, brilliant scenes and shrewd, bizarre performances.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
As in Korine's other movies, characterization is often just amplified weirdness.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
An odd, desperate film, lost in its own audacity, and yet there are passages of surreal beauty and preposterous invention that I have to admire. The film doesn't work, and indeed seems to have no clear idea of what its job is, and yet (sigh) there is the temptation to forgive its trespasses simply because it is utterly, if pointlessly, original.
Read Full Review
42
The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
Has its moments of wonder and beauty, but the film is obscure by design, and meant to appeal to those who favor the alternative canon of directing greats: the one that includes the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, Crispin Glover, John Cassavetes, Claire Denis, Abel Ferrara, and Vincent Gallo.
Read Full Review
38
TV Guide Ken Fox
The film is really little more than an array of sometimes imaginative images.
Read Full Review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Some films, like some people, wear their artsy pretensions on their sleeve, and there really isn't much going on beneath – it's just a posturing armband wrapped around a plain arm. Welcome, then, to the emptiness of Mister Lonely, a movie that goes to extraordinary lengths to say ordinary things.
Read Full Review
25
New York Post Kyle Smith
Occasionally there is a striking image or a moment of wounded sweetness, but mainly the film provides ample proof that it's possible to be bizarre and boring at the same time.
Read Full Review
25
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
None of the faux icons comes close to being a character. Instead, they are contrasted with a group of nuns who skydive without parachutes. Could this possibly be a metaphor for Korine's filmmaking? It certainly goes splat.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 4.4 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

George M. gave it a3:
A few (very few) engaging images and a few (very few) engaging performances. If you want a plot with your story, this is not the movie for you. Extremely self-indulgent film making.

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: Fantasy Football | Miley Cyrus | MLB | iPhone 3G | GPS | Recipes | Shwayze | NFL

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CNET Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use