Advanced Search Beta »
Basic Search Fields
Die, Mommie, Die!
Metascore
54 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 23 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 23
  3. Negative: 4 out of 23
view
per page
  1. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Alexis Soloski
    80
    Though Natasha Lyonne as bratty daughter and Philip Baker Hall as the disposable spouse impress, it's Busch's heartfelt Joan Crawford homage that enthralls. Busch can transcend even the smog, making hazy camp seem fresh.
  2. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    80
    With his hilarious spoof Die Mommie Die! Charles Busch takes the melodramatic woman's picture of the '40s and '50s to delirious extremes.
  3. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    80
    Makes a jolly absurdist stew out of its sources.
  4. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    75
    Hotly hilarious.
  5. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    75
    Busch combines French absurdist theater and American performance art with a drag queen's flamboyant wit.
  6. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    75
    Hilarious mixture of Greek tragedy and Aaron Spelling soap opera that spews nasty one-liners and winking '60 signifiers like a slot machine that's paying out.
  7. Variety
    Reviewed by: Dennis Harvey
    70
    Doing for the cheesier Ross Hunter-style bigscreen soaps of the early/mid-'60s what "Far From Heaven" did for the plush Douglas Sirk melodramas of a decade earlier -- albeit with tongue planted much further in cheek -- writer/star Charles Busch's Die Mommie Die! is an enjoyable genre homage-cum-parody.
  8. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    70
    It succeeds, with a big, false-eyelashed wink.
  9. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    67
    Busch, looking like a depressed Stockard Channing, throws his tantrums with breathy ''aristocratic'' hauteur. Yet the movie winds up walking a line between put-on pastiche and kitsch passion, and Jason Priestley is perfect as a brooding lunkhead of Tab Hunter gigolo-osity.
  10. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    63
    A brilliantly pitch-perfect sendup of a particular type of cheesy movie.
  11. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Megan Lehmann
    63
    Occasionally stagy and flat, "Die" is worth seeing for Busch's grand performance, which won him a Special Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
  12. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Chris Kaltenbach
    63
    Taken together, the sum of so many parts is too schizophrenic to be wholeheartedly embraced -- the movie is played for parody, but with a veneer of respectability that leaves the whole endeavor betwixt and between.
  13. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    60
    But fabulous though the allusions, sets and costumes are, Busch's performance is the movie's heart, and like the screen idols whose every gesture he's lovingly absorbed, Busch can pack a world of meaning into an arched eyebrow and a slight crack of the voice.
  14. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    50
    The problem with Die, Mommie, Die, a drag send-up of the genre, is that it spoils the fun by making it obvious.
  15. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Ruthe Stein
    50
    Neither hilarious nor a credible spoof.
  16. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    50
    A one-note farce that struggles just to remain on key.
  17. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Chuck Wilson
    50
    Predictably, the jokes are raunchy, yet they're few in number, as if the writer's sleaze well is running dry. First-time director Mark Rucker has a nice feel for period detailing but fails to build on his star's rare flashes of high energy.
  18. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Robert Wilonsky
    50
    Busch, responsible for the similarly hit-and-miss-that's-a-mister "Psycho Beach Party," has a good idea; two in one movie would make him absolutely fabulous.
  19. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    50
    This originated as a late-night play, and the humor is correspondingly sophomoric, but I loved Dennis McCarthy's melodramatic score.
  20. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Allison Benedikt
    38
    It's a screen adaptation of Busch's stage play of the same name, which never really went anywhere after its 1999 Los Angeles debut -- and doesn't go anywhere here.
  21. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    30
    Seems more like an amateur revue, perfectly all right for what it is, but not meant to be seen beyond an audience of friends and family.
  22. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    30
    What's strangest, though, about Die Mommie Die! is how material that was obviously so giddily irreverent in origin became so inert, so joyless and dull.
  23. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    20
    Mean-spirited and stagy where "Psycho Beach Party" was cinematic and charming, Die, Mommie, Die recycles gags from Busch's screenwriting debut--from transparently phony rear projection to a character's crippling constipation--and the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty hard.
prev next
Page:
  • 1