Pretty Persuasion

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) David Gilmour

It is also extremely well-written in the fearless way of a smarty pants on a roll in the university cafeteria.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

This is a very funny film about a creepy, excruciatingly lonely world.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

An obscene, misanthropic go-for-broke satire, Pretty Persuasion is so gleefully nasty that the fact that it was even made and released is astonishing. Much of it is also extremely funny.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

It's too bad that the satire is not more pointed, because Pretty Persuasion is outrageously funny in short blasts, mainly thanks to James Woods at his most gleefully depraved.

The New Yorker David Denby

The comedy is brutal and paper thin, but that is less bothersome than the ending of the movie, which abruptly changes its tone.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

There is such a thoroughgoing nastiness to the plot and dialogue that the film almost achieves a level of buoyancy.

Empire Dan Jolin

A teenie "To Die For" whose flaws are superceded by a complex, compelling turn from Evan Rachel Wood.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

In a star-making performance, Evan Rachel Wood stars as essentially a younger version of Nicole Kidman's media-age femme fatale from "To Die For," an aspiring 15-year-old actress who hides a sharp, calculating mind behind a façade of vapid, chattering self-absorption.

Film Threat Jeremy Mathews

Kills itself with unrestrained negativism, but almost resuscitates itself with some great comedy.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

So exploitative and misogynistic that its last-minute dramatic turns and pleas for tolerance and understanding come off as manipulative as its heroine.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

If the resulting film doesn't work equally well at all levels, Wood (who starred in "Thirteen") gives an astonishing performance that pushes it most of the way there.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

Ms. Wood, who made a potent impression two years ago as a naïve adolescent led astray by a sophisticated and psychotic classmate in "Thirteen," has the whip hand this time around -- and she's wonderfully persuasive. She needs a movie to match.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

So the movie is daring, and well-acted. Yet it isn't very satisfying, because the serious content keeps breaking through the soggy plot intended to contain it.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Tries to be an audacious, irreverent satire about youth culture like "Lord Love a Duck," but most of the laughs get strangled at birth by the uncertainty of Siega's tone.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Only partly successful.

Boston Globe Janice Page

Isn't so much awful as it is self-conscious, overdone, shallow, and just not up to the level of its star.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Pretty Persuasion reminds me of a half-hour TV series that has a great pilot episode, then falls apart in subsequent installments. Movies need to grow and change to keep things interesting; this one is stagnant.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

A film that aspires to join the company of its predecessors--smart, funny satires that skewered the hypocrisy and cruelty of high school life. But it won't. For starters, Pretty Persuasion commits a fatal error: It forgets to side with the students.

Variety Dennis Harvey

An exercise in bad taste that takes itself just seriously enough to be offensive.

Village Voice Ben Kenigsberg

A high school send-up more gleefully incorrect than "Heathers" and considerably less articulate than "Election," Pretty Persuasion is a hand grenade lobbed at no place in particular.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Not funny because it's not true.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Sets out to be a social critique but settles for smug disdain.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Another high school vixen movie, this one with a potty mouth (the vixen) and pretensions of social commentary (the movie), Pretty Persuasion brings to mind a number of other titles, all better.

Washington Post Curt Fields

It just rings false, like having Hannibal Lecter take up vegetarianism.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Most of Halim's script is a laundry list of offensive remarks that he no doubt means to serve as titillating spoof, but none of it's funny or even the least bit provocative, just offensive.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

A devastatingly dishonest, tough look at teenage life.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The movie wants so badly to be mentioned in the same breath as "Heathers" or "Election" that it's not even funny. Really, I mean it, this charred-black comedy is not even funny.

Premiere Peter Debruge

There's enough estrogen gone awry in this bitchy teen comedy to make "Mean Girls" look like a Disney after-school special.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The disingenuous attempt to give the tawdry story some kind of social import only makes the tinny caricatures more insincere, while his erotic display of 15-year-old girls isn't a satire of a sexualized culture, it's just dirty.