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Grand Theft Parsons
Metascore
46 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 11 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 11
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 11
  3. Negative: 1 out of 11
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  1. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Chad Bixby
    80
    Top it off with a cameo by the real-life Phil Kaufman, and you've got a rock'n'roll road movie like no other. Wherever he is, Gram should get a kick out of it.
  2. Variety
    Reviewed by: Leslie Felperin
    70
    A likably laid-back spin about the bizarre fate of rock 'n' roll legend Gram Parsons' corpse. Inspired by a true story, pic travels down familiar genre highways, but quirky humor and an apt soundtrack make for a pleasant enough journey.
  3. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    63
    Gram Parsons' last rites were among the most extra­ordinary in rock history. Too bad this retelling of the singer's final adventure is so tame.
  4. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Frank Scheck
    50
    What could have served as a colorful episode in a more expansive film about the famed singer has instead become the premise of a mildly entertaining but overextended road movie that doesn't succeed on either dramatic or comedic terms.
  5. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Megan Lehmann
    50
    The film is too low-key to be the farcical rock-and-roll jape it sometimes seems to strive for, yet too lighthearted to be affecting.
  6. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Ed Halter
    50
    Neither a satisfying exploration of ’70s culture, nor a madcap "Weekend at Bernie’s" caper, nor an informative paean to Parsons's legacy, Grand Theft stumbles toward all three possibilities, backpedals, then stalls, left to coast as an insipid road movie.
  7. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Crust
    50
    Knoxville is surprisingly good playing a man who may have been in one too many barroom brawls, moving with a hunched, hips-forward swagger that suggests someone constantly walking through very low doorways.
  8. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    50
    Parsons himself might have written a surreal, funny-sad ballad about the aftermath of his own death, but Grand Theft Parsons is little more than a surreal anecdote, told in too much detail and without enough soul or imagination to make anything more than a footnote to a legend.
  9. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    40
    The best thing about the whole sorry enterprise is the soundtrack, which features choice tunes by Bruce Springsteen, Starsailor and, of course, Parsons himself.
  10. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Kimberley Jones
    40
    Knoxville, in his first dramatic role, does what he can with script and direction that aggressively eschew any insight into Kaufman's grief.
  11. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: John Patterson
    30
    Irish director David Caffrey and English screenwriter Jeremy Drysdale have, respectively, zero sense of pace and a tin-eared grasp of period speech, and together fail either to let us care about their characters or to create any sense of a living era.
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