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80This film is a wonderful act of imagination on its own.
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80Not quite a biopic, not really a documentary and only loosely an adaptation, Howl does something that sounds simple until you consider how rarely it occurs in films of any kind. It takes a familiar, celebrated piece of writing and makes it come alive.
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75Howl mixes a number of story lines and aesthetic approaches: We get glimpses of Ginsberg's early days as a poet, including his relationships with Kerouac and Neal Cassady, as well as a depiction of the trial, where a parade of critics and professors pronounced Ginsberg's creation either a work of genius or irredeemable filth.
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75Epstein and Friedman's doc-like approach also results in a certain dramatic stasis; Howl is a film aimed more for the head than the gut.
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75One of the qualities I like about this film is that the writer-directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, are aware of the time when Beat scene was new.
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75This multi-pronged labor of love doesn't always work, but it often does, sometimes in ways that take your breath away.
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75The trouble with the film is that it often feels too respectable for its own good, preserving the facts of yesterday's rebellion while leaving it firmly in the past. Happily, Ginsberg's words still cut recklessly through the years.
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75The language of that poem, which periodically pours out from the screen, is the best thing in the movie. The worst thing: the interpolated animated sequences that are meant to "illustrate" the poem but which can't begin to compete with the imagery evoked by Ginsberg's words.
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70What's cinematic experimentation without a few failures in the lab? Maybe that's why Howl is so appealing: The filmmakers don't get everything right but their passion for Ginsberg's genius and their excitement over trying to deconstruction a literary master work is contagious.
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70The result is more fancy than funky, but the directors' aim is true and occasionally hits its mark.
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70The film of Howl, like its source material, is undeniably brave, committed and inventive.
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70By the time this movie's over, you've spent an hour and a half just working your way through the words of Howl and some related source material, and that turns out to be a surprisingly satisfying thing to do.
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70Intelligent and highly respectful of its central character and his titular landmark poem, HOWL is an admirable if fundamentally academic exploration of the origins, impact, meaning and legacy of Allen Ginsberg's signal work.
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70The result, though clearly flawed, is passionate and ambitious, celebrating that long-gone era when a book of verse could spark a revolution in consciousness.
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67Franco is rather astounding, looking and sounding plausibly like Ginsberg and talking about complex ideas in a genuinely relaxed tone.
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63It's well-crafted, but I wish the film showed us an additional dimension or two of the central figure, who once said the great challenge in writing, any kind of writing, is "to write the same way you are."
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63I found Howl a fascinating and imaginative evocation of mid-20th-century liberation, a mere and merciful 90 minutes long.
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60With a frustrating format and poor animation, it's still worth it for Franco and the chance to engage with a key work of poetry.
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60A movie with no clear narrative. It pushes boundaries and feels like one man's fever dream. But all those traits would certainly make Allen Ginsberg happy.
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50The result is a film of passion and ambition, but one whose success is intermittent at best.
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50Well intentioned on every level, the movie is successful only on some, and it falls flat when trying to visualize the innards of the poem itself.
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50A very mixed bag. It's an oddly dry fusion of documentary and narrative film that arguably doesn't quite click on either level.
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50Basically, Epstein and Friedman are feel-good filmmakers-their Ginsberg has one of the shortest, most successful bouts of psychotherapy in history. But is it really necessary to affirm the poem's ecstatic footnote ("Holy! Holy! Holy!") with a montage of smiling reaction shots?
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40Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's mostly whiffed docudrama makes the influential poem by Allen Ginsberg (Franco) seem dull, ordinary, pedestrian instead of pioneering.
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