Bombay Beach
Bombay Beach Image
Metascore
74 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critics What's this?

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  • Summary: Bombay Beach is one of the poorest communities in southern California located on the shores of the Salton Sea, a man-made sea stranded in the middle of the Colorado desert that was once a beautiful vacation destination for the privileged and is now a pool of dead fish. Film director Alma Har'el tells the story of three protagonists. The trials of Benny Parrish, a young boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder whose troubled soul and vivid imagination create both suffering and joy for him and his complex and loving family. The story of CeeJay Thompson, a black teenager and aspiring football player who has taken refuge in Bombay Beach hoping to avoid the same fate of his cousin who was murdered by a gang of youths in Los Angeles; and that of Red, an ancient survivor, once an oil field worker, living on the fumes of whiskey, cigarettes and an irrepressible love of life. Together these portraits form a triptych of manhood in its various ages and guises, in a gently hypnotic style that questions whether they are a product of their world or if their world is a construct of their own imaginations.… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. indieWIRE
    Reviewed by: Eric Kohn
    Feb 13, 2012
    100
    The beautiful desolation of Bombay Beach makes it difficult to describe as a documentary. Alma Har'el's directorial debut takes a nonfiction setting and displays its haunting qualities in poetic terms.
  2. Empire
    Reviewed by: Philip Wilding
    Feb 13, 2012
    80
    The fact that Alma Har'el is still stuck in music video director mode makes for an interesting new breed of documentary.
  3. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Mark Olsen
    Feb 13, 2012
    60
    More lyrical tone poem than straightforward documentary.
  4. Movieline
    Reviewed by: Alison Willmore
    Feb 13, 2012
    60
    But it's to little Benny that the film's heart belongs -- an adorable kid who seems to live only half in this world and the rest of the time in his own imagination, Benny's on a regimen of Ritalin and Lithium and other meds that sometimes leave him even dreamier than is his norm.

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