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Shortbus
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 27 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 60 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: John Cameron Mitchell
Directed by: John Cameron Mitchell
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 4, 2006
DVD: March 13, 2007
Running Time: 101 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Jay Brannan, Justin Bond, Lindsay Beamish, Paul Dawson, Peter Stickles, PJ DeBoy, Raphael Barker, Sook-Yin Lee, Jasper James, Paul Stovall, Scott Matthew, Bitch, Daniela Sea, Shanti Carson, Adam Hardman, and Bradford Scobie
John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic and tragic intersections between love and sex in and around a modern-day underground salon. The characters converge on a weekly gathering called Shortbus: a mad nexus of art, music, politics and polysexual carnality. Set in a post-9/11, Bush-exhausted New York City, Shortbus tells its story with sexual frankness, suggesting new ways to reconcile questions of the mind, pleasures of the flesh and imperatives of the heart. (ThinkFilm)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
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...
The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Developed by Mitchell and the actors, the characters don't always seem consistent from moment to moment, but a sharp sense of humor and comfortable performances by a committed and--it must be said--remarkably limber cast help smooth over the rough edges.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Shortbus is nothing if not over-the-top, replete with consummated sex acts, both gay and straight.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
The boldest provocation of Mitchell’s sweet, tender and gently funny film may be its exuberant celebration of community and togetherness at a cultural moment rife with fatalism and disconnect.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
If there is such a thing as hard-core with a soft heart, this is it.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
A darkly comic trifle that follows in the footsteps of such films as Catherine Breillat's "Romance" (2000), "The Brown Bunny" (2003) and Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs" (2004) by incorporating hard-core sex into a nonpornographic narrative.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
Mitchell's energy and occasional ingenuity make Shortbus an engaging viewing experience, provided you can stomach it.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Mitchell's adventurous, big- hearted, pansexual mosaic of New Yorkers looking for love and orgasms (not necessarily in that order), is a rare example of a nonporn film that doesn't exploit graphic sex as a gimmick.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Shortbus is, first and foremost, an experiment -- an accessible, audience-friendly movie about love and sex in which the screen doesn't fade to black once the actors start taking off their clothes.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
In Shortbus, the impish writer-director John Cameron Mitchell does the unthinkable: He puts the joy back in movie sex.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It's refreshing to see a non-mainstream movie that wears its heart and lust on its sleeve, and has anything but violence on its mind.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jim Ridley
There's something refreshingly frisky and celebratory about Shortbus that offsets its flaws. It's a triple-X midnight movie with a heart of squarest gold.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
An ode to the joy and sweet release of sex, the film manages to be a sincere, modest political venture that finds humor where you might least expect it, notably in a ménage à trois featuring a cheeky rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner."
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The sex is the most unremarkable thing about it. What surprised me most about this gentle-spirited sprawl of a movie, set in post-9/11 New York City, is what I can only call the friendly, Midwestern quality of the filmmaking.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
The quest for sexual happiness is a radical notion in these repressive times, as well as a legitimate basis for storytelling, but Shortbus doesn't quite delve as deeply as it ought into its characters' emotions.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Some viewers will call the whole business pornography, though it doesn't really qualify. The sex is blunt and enthusiastic, but arousing it ain't. In fact, when Shortbus arrives on DVD, viewers may be fast-forwarding through the sex to get to the acting.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Shortbus tends to work better in its first, comic half, than in its second, more serious stretch, where the characters' trials and tribulations flirt with soap opera. The actors, formidable with their clothes off, aren't always as expressive fully dressed.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen
Though it flirts with the hard-core, there is something strangely flaccid about Shortbus, a ragged, uneven quality that, however purposeful, makes it feel less than fully formed.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Unquestionably the most sexually graphic American narrative feature ever made outside the realm of the porn industry, John Cameron Mitchell's ambitious attempt to merge his characters' active sexual lives with more conventional emotional content is playfully and provocatively entertaining for roughly the first half, but loses staying power thereafter when investment in the uncompelling characters' problems is requested.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Shortbus is chipper, it's fresh, it emits a distinct musk of controversy. I'll take the longbus.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Although Shortbus doesn't work as porn (and I don't believe it's intended to), it also doesn't work as a serious drama. The storyline is juvenile and the characters remain poorly developed and incomplete.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Kate Taylor
For all the carnality on offer here, Mitchell and his cast seem ambivalent about sex.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
The film lacks the depth and discipline of Mitchell's first film venture, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," which makes Shortbus a real disappointment.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
While the film has visual verve, its faux-Fellini finale only underscores how remote, repetitive, uninvolving and contrived the whole enterprise is.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Shortbus suffers from a vague, ad lib-y script and a cast that, while hardly shy, isn't exactly charismatic.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
The premise -- a roundelay of New Yorkers looking for connection, or to escape it -- feels tired, and Mitchell's portrayal of sex as the ultimate vehicle for transcendence, self-knowledge and healing, while conveyed with authentic sweetness, seems shockingly naive.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Mitchell may be another Russ Meyer -- a dubious honor -- but he's no Tony Kushner.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 60 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
JohnMitchell Hater gave it a0:
John Cameron Mitchell is a lonely man looking to get off. Biggest piece of crap. The critics want to seem like they're superior, but supporting shortbus, but anyone who liked this most have went to school on the shortbus.
Jay F gave it an8:
Going into this, I knew it was a very sexual movie. I assumed it would be like a porno. I admit, the sex scenes were basically soft-core porn. However, this, remarkably, did not hamper the quality of the movie. This movie is about human connection, and how these emotionally unbalanced people eventually come to terms with everything. The large cast of characters makes it that much more fun. There's many touching scenes in this film. Like when the old man is talking to Ceth and he begins to cry. The kiss Ceth gives him is so not sexual, and it's actually touching. Or when Jamie and James look at each other through the window, and without even saying a word, achieve their peace. My favorite character has to be Severin though. She is the one who is the most misguided, and I don't think she ever truly find her way. But she becomes okay with it. This movie is a work of comic, dramatic, and, dare I say it, romantic greatness. I loved it.
Scott F. gave it a10:
The wild and varied range of reactions elicited by this movie demonstrate that it does indeed strike a chord. Watch it and be moved.
Hal I. gave it a10:
Brilliant. When the Oscars are released from the grip of the radical right, a movie like this will win best picture. A masterpiece that blows the oscar victors of late out of the water.
Brad R. gave it a3:
This is a movie trying so hard to be at once acceptable and provocative that it ends up being one long string of cliches. Not that it doesn't have its pleasures, guilty or otherwise: the opening is playful, there are funny moments here and there, and there are some jarringly un-funny moments too (e.g., the dead man in the pool). But finally, the film is as tame and conventional as it could be. Comedy tends toward convention and re-asserting a status quo, but great comedy unsettles us to the core before pretending to patch things up. Mitchell and his cast never manage to really unsettle us, at least not believably (spoiler warning!). For instance, Jamie's suicide attempt and its resolution seemed painfully contrived and trivial--and the same came be said for much of the sex, which doesn't finally serve any point. I know that last statement may blow the fuses of the film's many fans, so I'll add another just for fun: take out the sex (yes, it's possible) and what you're left with is a completely conventional, normative romantic comedy. If you want a thought-provoking film about sex, watch Last Tango instead.
M K gave it a2:
Terrible. Weak characters, childlike acting and premise. Just terrible to watch...it was as if a gay (bi) 13 year old hitting puberty had been given a few bucks to make a film....AMATEUR!!!! And not good amateur. Really weak.
Gina N. gave it a10:
Nothing like I've ever seen. Pretty brilliant, actually.
