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Storytelling

EMAILPRINTFine Line Features

Storytelling reviews
50
7.4 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 31 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 14 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama

Written by: Todd Solondz

Directed by: Todd Solondz

Release Date:
Theatrical: January 25, 2002
DVD: July 16, 2002

Running Time: 87 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: R for strong sexual content, language and some drug use

Starring Selma Blair, Paul Giamatti, Leo Fitzpatrick, John Goodman, and Julie Hagerty

Storytelling is comprised of two separate stories set against the sadly comical terrain of college and high school, past and present. Following the paths of its young hopeful/troubled characters, it explores the issues of sex, race, celebrity and exploitation. (Fine Line Features)

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...

90

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A movie that advances the career of a demonstrably gifted filmmaker, a fearlessly funny movie whose laughs draw blood, a bracingly provocative movie that won't apologize for its bad temper.

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90

Film Threat Chris Gore

A masterful comedy that will divide audiences, but it left me laughing hysterically. I hope that doesn’t make you think I’m a sick bastard, but if so, piss off.

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88

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

I saw it a third time. By then I had moved beyond the immediate shock of the material and was able to focus on what a well-made film it was; how concisely Solondz gets the effects he's after.

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80

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

None of this intellectualizing is necessary to the simple enjoyment of Storytelling -- provided the viewer has a taste for the pitch-black humor that emerges when Solondz's camera becomes a veritable blowtorch aimed at humanity's myriad failings.

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75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Solondz has finally made a movie that isn't just offensive -- it also happens to be good. He's still shouting, still violating our politically correct sensibilities, but the shocks now have thematic purpose. They don't just titillate, they resonate.

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75

Boston Globe Loren King

Cleverly mocks the modern chronicler, raising questions that linger long after the film is finished.

75

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Solondz is a courageous social commentator and a canny provocateur at the same time. He'll never get to Hollywood if he stays on this track, but cinema will be a lot duller if he ever mends his incendiary ways.

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70

Village Voice J. Hoberman

The leanest and meanest of Solondz's misanthropic comedies, feasts on the anguish of adolescence and confusion of college -- white suburban-style.

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63

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Almost as uncompromising, and sometimes as funny, as "Dollhouse" or "Happiness."

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63

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Although Solondz's view is omniscient, as a filmmaker here he condescends to his characters' innocence, ignorance and bigotry, making him guilty of the same narrative crimes.

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60

TV Guide Ken Fox

The film is all a little Lit Crit 101, but it's extremely well played and often very funny. But beware: Solondz uses humor as a booby trap, so be careful what you laugh at.

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60

Time Richard Corliss

Does Solondz feel remorse for libeling his own kind? He might need to if his portraits didn't have the gift of dark wit, the ring of social truth. One makes allowances for a master storyteller.

50

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

Solondz should have called this one "So-So Storytelling."

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50

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Storytelling is no more likely than "Happiness" or "Welcome to the Dollhouse" to resolve the question of whether director Todd Solondz is a serious artist or a nasty little man with a perversely glum view of the universe.

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50

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Satisfying to the degree that you agree, with Solondz and Thomas Hobbes, that life is on the whole nasty, brutish and short.

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50

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Lack of any real substance.

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50

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Solondz's refusal to frame his dark, misanthropic impulses with an overriding point-of-view seems a cheap copout for a film whose title proposes that it's about the storytelling process.

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50

New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf

Solondz's singular game plan is to dangle profoundly obnoxious caricatures before us, then punish them mercilessly for their stupidity, which is amusing enough if you're in the mood for that sort of thing.

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50

ReelViews James Berardinelli

An inelegant combination of two unrelated shorts that falls far short of the director's previous work in terms of both thematic content and narrative strength.

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50

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The lower your expectations, the more you'll enjoy it.

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50

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Newcomers should be advised that this is not an introductory course.

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50

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The most pleasing paradox in Storytelling -- a determinedly paradoxical and, in spite of much of what I've said here, a genuinely pleasing movie -- is that it sets out to debunk this notion and ends up affirming it.

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40

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It would be tempting to call Storytelling a narrow and simplistic examination of the creative process, if only Solondz weren't so quick to agree.

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40

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Twisted and outrageous but ultimately artificial. Albert Brooks did this art-reality thing a lot better years ago in "Real Life," his takeoff on PBS's "An American Family," and was sidesplitting besides.

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40

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Todd Solondz's newest debacle drips with contempt for his audience, his characters and his critics.

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40

Slate David Edelstein

Less a rounded narrative than a pair of suggestive -- and unresolved -- exercises.

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40

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The urge to make viewers squirm is fair enough, but when it runs ahead of the urge to entertain -- when the jokes trail in the wake of the embarrassments -- you can't help leaving the theatre sad and soured. [4 Feb 2002, p. 82]

40

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A provocative but eventually dislikable two-part film that dares us to dislike it.

25

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Another mean-spirited black comedy from Todd Solondz, tries even harder than the director's two earlier films to shock and outrage -- but the overall effect of his sophomoric excess is tiresome and dull, like watching someone else's 2-year-old act out for the 50th time.

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25

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Solondz is still stuck in an adenoidal whine.

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16

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

While there are maybe two moments of genuinely clever humor, Storytelling is the work of a previously promising filmmaker who, having no new ideas, has morphed into a sniggering schoolboy intent upon being mean.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 14 User Votes

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

David C. gave it a7:
The relationship between the "fiction" and "nonfiction" ends up being far more interesting than the stories themselves, which are plagued by caricature and stagey directing. All of this belies the fact that this is an entertaining, provocative film. The second half of "nonfiction" is impressive in the way that it brings both the film and the audience into self-referential territory. Whether you found the humour amusing (as I did) or mean-spirited is a matter of taste.

Steve G. gave it an8:
I usually hate it when people say "If you didn't like it, it's because you didn't understand it." But I can't help but think that myself when I read many of the reviews of Storytelling (or any Solondz film, really). They cast it off as a mean-spirited 'black comedy', and that Solondz has contempt for the characters he's created. However I can't help but notice that the only people who are actually judging the characters in that light are these critics themselves. (He even has Giamatti say he "loves these people". Maybe it should have been Solondz himself on-screen.) Solondz, knowing this tendency of his critics, directly confronts them in the scene where "American Scooby" is being screened. They are laughing at the main character, completely rejecting his worth as a human being, and basking in their superiority. But even with this scene in the film, the critics still just don't 'get it'. It's as if they can only understand films where the narrative is completely spelled out for them, with low-dimensional characters, and ham-fisted sentimentality (ala American Beauty). In effect, Solondz gets the last laugh, with these critics doing nothing but proving his point.

Chad S. gave it an 8:
In "Fiction", Todd Solondz walks a fine line between being racist, and being racist to portray racism in a convincing matter. [***SPOILERS***] Vi(Selma Blair) isn't being racist when she says, "**** me hard, ******", because Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom) is the one who's fulfilling that role. Vi's forced to utter the slur to justify the instructor's rape fantasies. He hates his white female students. But it looks like consensual sex, yet Vi describes the experience as rape to her creative writing class. In the bathroom on the night in question, she tells herself, "Don't be a racist," in which, I think, she presumes that sex with a black man is automatically rape. "Fiction" will make you squirm, and squirm some more. The squirming doesn't stop with "Non-Fiction". What's not commonly reported is that Solondz's treatment of a Hispanic character might be even more rigorous than his African-American author. Consuelos (Lupe Ontiveros), a maid, is humiliated, and then she acts on it. But like the first story, both sides are racist. Less demonstrative than Mr. Scott's pelvic thrusts, and Vi's cry of wolf, Lupe causes more damage, as Solondz has us perversely cheering for the death of a priveleged, but neglected child. "Storytelling" moves into majestic territory when Solondz turns on himself, and even more so, his audience.

Tonight With Gilbert Mulroneycakes gave it an 8:
Hmm. Now this is very odd indeed. What to make of it, I do not know. Okay, first, I'm here to tell you that the critics over here in Britain weren't divided - they all hated it. And wanted it to die. Which...is fair enough because there's a lot to hate right here. Solondz hits a lot of audience-buttons very hard, and your enjoyment of the film will pretty much correspond to how you respond to the button-hitting. However - and this is just me talking, I'm still not sure what Solondz was trying to do exactly - I don't think he's deliberately courting controversy per se. Look at the "offensive" things he uses. Disability. Racism. Homosexuality. Jewishness. The Holocaust. And of course he gives middle-class suburbia a kicking as well. But I'm thinking that this isn't supposed to shock exactly, because...look at the list, it's like a how-to checklist. These are almost clichés. I reckon that Storytelling's playing with a sort of bleak post-modernism (screams, whinnying) - he knows this is obvious shock-material, and expects the audience to know it as well - and to be aware of his previous film. It's all part of the critique of himself that forms the thematic core of the movie. But that's all my opinion, and what do I know? Storytelling's been called cruel, and in some ways it is (THAT scene between Selma Blair and Robert Wisdom), but Solondz doesn't seem to hate his characters. His Giamatti alter-ego says he loves them, and he probably does. He puts them through some bad stuff, though, and again, I think you're supposed to notice - and listen to the lyrics of the great Belle and Sebastian title song over the credits. This is a movie to watch more than once in order to really grasp what it's for, and where all the pieces go. Even then, you might hate it. I'm finding it hard to rate as it is - because it's got so many cinematic layers, because it's so different from most movies out there, it's kind of hard to slap an arbitrary number onto it. Also, the rating might be compromised by how many of your buttons Solondz successfully presses. But I can't give it not without buggering up the Metascore™, so I'll give it 8, because I sort of admire, or appreciate it...ish. A bit. I think. Assuming I know what he's doing, and there's the rub - most reviews of Storytelling I've read discuss the film in terms of their own theories or ideas of what the movie's for, without stopping to think if they're right or not. The only way you can properly review something is on it's own terms - Storytelling more so. Trouble is, what its own terms are exactly isn't quite clear - which isn't a criticism, but it is frustrating. So what can we say about Storytelling? Well, I can say whether I'd reccomend it or not. Well...no, I wouldn't. Not unreservedly. It's only really going to work for Solondz's "fanbase" (or indie-cred equivalent) or people who can appreciate bleak post-modernism (whinnying) like this. But it's "good" - it succeeds at what it sets out to do, probably. Can't say fairer than that. Perhaps.

C. B. gave it a 9:
Very good movie. Not as simplistic as some people are claiming. And for those who dislike the movie for its content are the ones being simplistic... Not all movies need to be "sunshine and happy rainbows," and when they are they are rarely worth watching. Movies are an art form and should be free to explore any subject matter (Bonnie G)

Cabbage gave it a 10:
The music in the opening credits. That's all I have to say. Genius!

Elliott M. gave it a 9:
The best of Solondz' films. All of you who are complaining about the content - don't ever see Happiness. You'll kill yourselves. Sure, this film is crude and mean, but it is also hilarious and I found myself laughing, despite the fact that I felt guilty for it. Happiness was just disgusting and had scenes thrown in simply for gross-out effect. Storytelling s a solid film full of thoughtful humor and condescending, yet hilarious, dialogue. Definitely not for all tastes, but this is a film that rewards multiple viewings, that is, if you're not afraid of being called a masochist.

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