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Generally favorable reviews - based on 14 Critics What's this?

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Generally favorable reviews- based on 105 Ratings

  • Starring: Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan
  • Summary: Set in a small American town, Blue Velvet is a dark, sensuous mystery involving the intertwining lives of four very different individuals. The film's painful realism reminds us that we are not immune to the disturbing events which transpire in Blue Velvet's sleepy community. There is a darker side of life waiting for us all. (De Laurentiis Entertainment Group Inc.) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 14
  2. Negative: 2 out of 14
  1. 100
    Blue Velvet is David Lynch in peak form, and represents (to date) his most accomplished motion picture. It is a work of fascinating scope and power that rivals any of the most subversive films to reach the screens during the '80s.
  2. Reviewed by: John Hartl
    80
    An exhilarating piece of popular entertainment.
  3. Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    60
    Lynch and his film will surely be reviled, but as an experiment in expanding cinema's dramatic and technical vocabulary, Blue Velvet demands respect. [Sept. 22, 1986]
  4. Reviewed by: Paul Attanasio
    30
    Doesn't progress or deepen, it just gets weirder, and to no good end.

See all 14 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 36 out of 42
  2. Negative: 5 out of 42
  1. AJ
    10
    It's hard to find the words to describe the experience of watching Blue Velvet. The film is simply a masterpiece.
  2. "Blue Velvet" opens with images from the American Dream: perfect little houses with white picket fences, and impeccably manicured yards. A man collapses while watering his lawn, and the camera, after following him to the ground, burrows into it--parting the blades of grass to reveal a colony of swarming bugs. The message is clear perfection often hides deeply-rooted rot. Dreams can easily turn into nightmares. Corruption is everywhere, even in places that seem immune to it. These themes, and others about the pernicious influence of evil, are explored in some depth throughout "Blue Velvet".

    Returning home to visit his father who is in intensive care at the hospital, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), stumbles upon a human ear he finds in a field. With local police detective Williams showing little interest to investigate, Jeffrey and Sandy (Laura Dern), Detective Williams's daughter, decide to do their own investigation. But what Jeffrey and Sandy's investigation leads them to discover that a dark underworld exists in their hometown. Jeffrey becomes suspicious of nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who is involved with Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), an unstable violent man. Dennis delivers a genuinely disturbing performance. There is a dark obsessiveness to "Blue Velvet" one that lingers long after the details of the film's mundane drug and kidnapping plot fade away. One is absorbed in the way that David Lynch draws Ivy League college kid Kyle MacLachlan down into a web of voyeurism, rape, sadomasochism and erotic tension. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about "Blue Velvet" is how it literally becomes a journey into darkness how as Kyle MacLachlan becomes drawn into the web.

    A truly eccentric and unsettling observation of the underlining, unspoken aspects behind the facade of any town, USA. "Blue Velvet" isn't a film for everyone. It has such an ominous, erotic nuance that disturbs, which has come to define his critically acclaimed work over the years. People who like straight forward storytelling where the journey from point A to point B is laid out for them won't be fans of "Blue Velvet". Much like Jeffrey, it's up to you to decide whether you fall into the former or the latter group.
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  3. Man returns home after his father becomes ill. He finds an ear in a field whilst walking home & decides to find out more.
    Dennis Hopper is bri
    lliant as the brutal Frank Booth & Kyle MacLachlan & Laura Dern are also good. However, Isabella Rossellini is plain awful & looks like Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Show!
    Lynch weirdness as expected but not as good as some of his other work
    Don't you f**king look at me!!!!
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  4. I give Blue Velvet a 3 because it does manage to invest its audience from the other side of the screen. But I really didn't like this. It was weird for the sake of being weird. It seemed to be riddled with lazy attempts at symbolism which were far from translated to the viewer (or at least this viewer). And at times it was unsettling for no reason. Not like the kind of unsettling that invigorates your insides and leaves you amazed. But the type of unsettling that just gives you a very unpleasant experience that you simply want to end. I found it to be a film that tried too hard and was even a bit pretentious. Not for moi. Expand

See all 42 User Reviews

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