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100The latter element joins with Crudup's excellent acting to make this deliberately scruffy tale a worthwhile experience if you can handle its explicitly sordid subplots.
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90Wildly funny bum's rush through the existentially absurd, self-engendered peaks and valleys of the junkie's lament.
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90A mesmerizing film spinning from hilarity to heartbreak.
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90An especially compassionate look at human frailty that also never loses sight of the inherent ridiculousness of "the human condition." Jesus' Son is one of this summer's best movies.
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90In a sea of one-note symphonies, this touching feature is bleak and comic, heartbreaking and affirmative, romantic and tragic, gimlet-eyed and sympathetic, all at the same time.
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88Jesus' Son surprises me with moments of wry humor, poignancy, sorrow and wildness. It has a sequence as funny as any I've seen this year.
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88A story of faith and redemption, as viewed through the blurry and bloodshot eyes of a young man.
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88Floats before your eyes like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The surprise is that, fitted together, these pieces make a completed picture.
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85If you haven't seen his (Crudup's) work before, Jesus' Son could be the one that makes you his biggest disciple.
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83Another grotty drama about junkie love? Well, yes...I make an exception for Jesus' Son.
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83If the result doesn't make dazzling watching, it nonetheless has the power to haunt.
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80It has a nobility and modesty, along with a refreshing lack of cynical attitude, that you rarely find in independent films these days.
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80Has the edge of black comedy that defines Maclean's sensibility, but it also has a mature new sweetness. And it's certainly one of the best films about the life of an addict since "Drugstore Cowboy."
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One of the pleasures of Jesus' Son is watching a filmmaker take risks and discover new resources of style.
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80It's best to see this as a drug buffet. Graze through the vignettes... and you'll find three or four tasty bits to snack on.
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80An intermittently compelling and occasionally hilarious road movie.
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80Crudup gives a performance that is by turns scary, heartbreaking, grotesque and funny as hell.
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80I don't much like movies about junkies...but this is easily the liveliest and most inventive I've seen since "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989).
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78The movie will not be for all tastes. Its seedy lifestyles, nonjudgmental attitudes, nonlinear narrative, and central character whose problem is his lack of emotions is definitely nonstandard fare.
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75It's so wonderfully silly, coarse and down-to-Earth that its radiance sneaks up only over time.
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75A dashing fusion of the literary and the cinematic.
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70But for all the divine touches, FH is no Jesus, or even his son: He's just another wide-eyed American Adam on the road again, a dazed and confused Huck Finn of the highways.
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70Makes good use of its actors.
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63Grim stuff, filled with great sorrow and tragedy, but it's never maudlin or weepy.
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63Movies about junkies are often brutal to watch, but Jesus' Son has such a light touch, you have little to fear. Little to gain, too.
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63Transcends ironic grunge-glamour and achieves a beguiling combination of dark comedy and genuine sweetness.
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63It's often a downer, with a sweet but largely passive protagonist.
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58Meanders as aimlessly as its drugged-out characters.
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50Does it make it as a movie? Only in fits and starts.
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50Though Maclean uses every trick available to make up for the missing inner voice, we never get into Crudup's mellow loser like we should. Maclean's got an incisive eye, but it's poised on the outside of the terrarium looking in.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 0 out of 3
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MyronB.7Highly entertaining and genuinely funny, until the flash-bang sugary ending that eradicates everything before it.